MEDIA ALERT
Tuesday, 19 July 2022
JOHANNESBURG – Following months of non-payment of many post-community service nurses, non-absorption of community service nurses and non-filling of vacant funded nursing positions by the Gauteng Department of Health, as well as many failures by the department address these challenges on many occasions, the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA) in Gauteng will be leading thousands of nurses in the provincial march tomorrow, 20 July 2022.
The march will also demand the removal of the Chief Financial Officer, Lerato Madyo, over the many failures to pay for supplies and suppliers, which resulted in many patients at various hospitals going for days without food and facilities remained with uncollected medical waste, amongst other sins.
It’s all systems go for tomorrow’s march. COSATU in Gauteng will be in full support of the march. Nurses from across the province’s five districts will descend on Johannesburg to voice out their unhappiness over a chain of failures by the Gauteng government to address the many human resources management glitches.
The march will commence at around 09h30 and leave from the COSATU House in Braamfontein to Mary Fitzgerald Square in Newtown, JHB, where the memoranda of demands will be handed to the three offices: Premier, Treasury, and Gauteng Department of Health.
Members of the media are cordially invited to attend the march and report.
Some of the demands include:
- Fair implementation of the performance bonus in the province.
- Improvement of safety in all healthcare facilities by insourcing of security services.
- Increase in the intake of student nurses by all the campuses of the public nursing college.
- Increase in the budget allocation for health.
- Doing away with budget cuts in healthcare services.
- Filling of vacant nursing positions.
- Support plan for healthcare workers who are depressed and suffer from various mental illnesses. due to overwork; and
- Immediate abolishing of the usage of nursing agencies.
The many deficiencies in the Gauteng Department of Health have led not only to poor confidence by the community members in the healthcare services in the province; they have also lowered the standard of care that is rendered to the patients. As a result, patients have to spend the whole day in public healthcare facilities mainly as a result of shortage of nursing staff, at the time when my nurses – whose studies were funded by the government – are made to stay at home when their services are greatly needed by the patients in facilities.
The details of the provincial march are as follows:
DATE: Wednesday 20 July 2022.
TIME: 09h30
DEPART FROM: COSATU House, 110 Jorissen Street, Braamfontein, JHB.
DESTINATION: Mary Fitzgerald Square, Newtown, JHB.
CONTACT: Simphiwe Gada, DENOSA Gauteng Provincial Chairperson.
MOBILE: 072 563 1923 / 079 501 4869.
End.
Issued by DENOSA in Gauteng.
For more information, contact:
Simphiwe Gada, DENOSA Gauteng Provincial Chairperson: 072 563 1923
Bongani Mazibuko, DENOSA Gauteng Provincial Secretary: 071 686 9544
