Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa

Media statement 

Friday, 04 October 2019

 

As the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA) in KwaZulu-Natal, we have learnt with dismay that the practice that is becoming common in many institutions where the ex MEC signed new staff establishments for differnt hospitals in the province.

 

Its implementation is not holistically done, and we find the situation where new positions should be created like monitoring and evalutions in the institutions which are not filled. But when it comes to combining of two wards, which were supervised by two managers before, now they must be supervised by one. 

 

This is not only unfair but it also adds workload to the supervisor who was employed to supervise one ward and now has to supervise staff and two different wards without any additional remuneration or consultations with unions since we view this as change of conditions of employment for our members.

 

In other institutions, when the operational manager resigns or retire, they do not employ her or his replacement but take his or her duty to any senior professional nurse to perform such duties. We believe this is total exploitation of our members because they have this added responsibilities without remuneration.

 

We have proposed the following to the Department:

 

1. Implementation of the new staff establishments should be across all positions affected not to individual positions. The department must not choose what to implement or not. They must fully implement the staff establishment holistically or not implement it at all.

 

2. All those positions vacated by operational managers to be given to any senior professional nurse at grade 3 so that they get remunerated accordingly. If the department cannot do that then our members who are occupying normal professional nurse posts will be advised to stick to what they are employed to do and avoid being exploited. 

 

3. The department should conduct proper inspection in locco to identify the distances between these combined wards which makes it difficult for one manager to supervise. In nursing it becomes impossible to perform duties of being operational managers for two seperate wards. This also poses the threat to our members not to know properly what is happening in their wards if they are not physically there.

 

We urge the department to take this matter serious and engage properly should there be a need of such changes to occur.

 

End

 

Issued by DENOSA in KwaZulu-Natal

 

For more information, contact:

 

Mandla Shabangu, DENOSA KZN Provincial Secretary

 

Mobile: 071 643 3469