Where are our salaries, ask Eastern Cape healthcare workers

Thousands of nurses contracted to fight Covid-19 have not been paid by the Eastern Cape health department.

The saga over the irrational failure to keep the contracted 8,000 nurses and other healthcare workers at work caring for the sick, eventually led to millions being made available to pay essential workers.

But sources said a substantial number of nurses among the 8,000 have not been paid their April wages. They accused the department of silence on their failure to pay them.

Initially, the department said it had run out of money to rehire the healthcare professionals for another 12 months but after public outrage and protests, the department decided to keep them on.

The public rejection of the department’s behaviour galvanised department officials to source R400m, and the contracts were renewed for another three months.

The department renewed the contracts of community healthcare workers for 12 months, but most of them also went unpaid at the end of April.

Provincial health spokesperson Size Kupelo told the Dispatch the department had started paying some workers last week but could not say when the job would be completed.

“We have started paying healthcare workers. In some districts, we paid on Thursday.

Some received their payments today [Monday], with the exception of Buffalo City and Sarah Baartman [district]. So we are paying ... we have paid,” Kupelo said.

An assistant nurse working near Alice said: “When our contracts expired we went to the department and to premier [Oscar] Mabuyane and our contracts were renewed for three months, but we did not get our salaries for April.

“The premier told us he would have loved to hire us permanently, but there was no money at this stage, but he promised they would source funding to give us a threemonth extension.

“But in April there was no word from the department about our salaries. We are still working but no one has bothered to come to us to tell us when we will get paid.”

Another nurse at Cecilia Makiwane Hospital in Mdantsane said they were in limbo as they still had to go to work even though they were destitute.

“We are still coming to work because there’s a need from our community, but some of us don’t have money to come to work. We are stuck in limbo.”

A nurse at Frere Hospital in East London said initially they had been promised they would get their salaries on April 25.

“I’m so stressed because noone told us we would not get paid. I’m behind with my debit orders. I have even reversed some of the debit orders just so I can have money to come to work.”

Denosa provincial secretary Khaya Sodidi said the union was unaware that healthcare workers had not been paid, but he would raise the issue with health MEC Nomakhosazana Meth when they meet in Mthatha on Wednesday at the International Nurses Day commemoration event.