NURSES DECRY POOR SECURITY AT WORKPLACES
LAX security inside wards is one specific issue that pushed Sylvia Lucas, a seasoned Northern Cape nurse, to join the health workers’ march in Pretoria yesterday.
“We’re not safe in our workplaces because patients are assaulting nurses. The public too is assaulting nurses,” said Lucas.
Just last December, her colleagues at Kimberley Hospital were robbed inside a ward, she said. “One night shift in December there were nurses who were robbed of their phones at gun and knife point. This happened in the ward.”
Health workers’ security was just not prioritised by the Department of Health, Lucas said. “In our facility, security guards are only there for cars and the buildings outside. We’re not safe inside. Our voices as nurses need to be heard now.”
Beefed-up security was one of the top demands by the workers. Cosatu unions – the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa and National Health, Education and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) – organised the march.
Protestors targeted the national departments of health and finance and the SA Nursing Council (SANC).
The workers generally demanded improvement of their working conditions.
“Nurses’ lives matter,” read one of their placards. “SANC fees must not rise,” said another.
They also demanded a decrease of premiums paid into the Government Employees Medical Scheme.
Young nurses also joined in their numbers to air their grievances. Boitumelo Mokalake, 21, a third-year student nurse at Bongani Nursing School in Free State, wanted their stipends increased. “Nursing students in other provinces are getting R4 000 to R6 000 a month. But we’re only getting R2 800,” said Mokalake.
“We’re here to fight for our rights. I want a stipend increment. They don’t deliver what they promised us when we started at the nursing school.”
Some of the marchers were not in the health sector, but joined in solidarity. Donning Nehawu clothing, Freddy Ndlovu works as an administration clerk in Limpopo’s agriculture department, but joined the march in protest against outsourcing across the government.
Nehawu’s first deputy president, Mike Shingange, accused Treasury of pursuing unnecessary austerity measures, thereby causing the decline of the number of posts in the public health sector. He said nurses were now being asked to write reports, something that distracts them from their core duties.
The departments sent senior officials to collect the memoranda of demands. They were given seven working days to respond.