Time to be fair by giving what’s due to the paramedics

Ambulance crews are legally not allowed to strike because they are classified as working in an essential service. Yet none of the Eastern Cape’s emergency bases was operational after state ambulance staffers embarked on their illegal strike this week. The extent of the strike indicates the depth of frustration felt by these medics who are the first port of call in myriad emergencies across our province.

They do not enjoy 9-5 jobs in a cushy government office. Instead they work day and night in all areas, coming to the rescue in medical trauma of all kinds – from assisting those injured in road accidents and criminal assaults to helping pregnant women and people stricken by heart attacks and strokes.

Self-evidently theirs is not an easy job and adding to the stress is that ambulance crews are highly vulnerable to criminals who reprehensibly have been known to attack and rob paramedics who were on the job. The EMS strikers are protesting about their working conditions and staff and ambulance shortages. They are right about this.

Only half the province’s ambulances are ready to hit the road at any given time and twice as many staff are needed to meet national norms.

However the key issue is that ambulance staff have been working 12-hour days. They want the state to pay up for overtime and excess hours worked since 2013, and in some cases overtime that has not been paid since as far back as 2003. This is far from unreasonable.

The authorities’ response has predictably been mealy-mouthed. Officials are said to be processing excess hours pay for the past three years but there is no indication of how far down the track this is. The issue of pay for 2003-2014 is said to be “under discussion”.

The festive season is looming, a time when most people look forward to relaxing with their family and friends but this is when emergency medics are stretched to capacity. Who can blame them for demanding to be paid ahead of Christmas for the many extra hours they have worked and not being willing to accept bureaucrats’ snail time?

If the work the ambulance crews do is termed essential then it is essential that they be paid in full for doing it.

Who can blame them for wanting to be paid ahead of Christmas for many extra hours they have worked?