Nehawu demands decent living wages

MBOMBELA – This is the ultimatum made by the national leadership of the union, that held a nationwide protest demanding the permanent placement of all community healthcare workers.

In Mpumalanga, the protests were held in Mbombela Freedom Square, the government complex. The Gert Sibande region converged at the Ermelo DoH district office and the Nkangala region at Pietkoornhoof’s departmental district office.

Nehawu is calling for the permanent employment of all community healthcare workers across all nine provinces on salary level 3 with full benefits that are similar to those of government employees, whose conditions of service fall under the Public Service Act, with immediate effect.

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“These community healthcare workers are in the system of the department. The union has been advocating for them to be employed in the public system permanently.

They are the backbone of primary healthcare. We demand that they be absorbed permanently in the system with all benefits necessary to them.

“We have given government until Thursday to respond. Failure to do so positively to our demands will leave us with no option but to intensify the strike and render the system ungovernable,” said Nehawu’s provincial secretary, Welcome Mnisi.

The union has been leading the national strike of community healthcare workers since November 11, after the DoH refused to permanently employ these workers.

According to Mnisi, the campaign has been marred by intimidation and victimisation of members and workers by the employer.

“One of our members was arrested in Pienaar, Msogwaba because she was exercising her rights as an employee for the standardisation of the remuneration for community healthcare workers.

She appeared in court and is currently out on bail. You can see that the DoH in Mpumalanga is not engaging us in good faith. We want those comrades to be released and cases withdrawn.

“When Covid-19 broke out, these were the same workers who were reaching out to families, screening members of the community with the department and doing all this work without even being paid for overtime or provided uniforms. They were made to buy their own name tags.

This is wrong and should not be happening. These are the issues we are fighting and we are not going to rest. If government doesn’t come to the party, we will use legal means to force the DoH to absorb these workers,” he continued.

“With coronavirus numbers soaring again, these employees will be called on again to assist the most vulnerable population of our society.

They will be expected to continue with the duty of screening, testing, treating and disseminating information to communities.

The government cannot continue to exploit them without paying them decent salaries and not the meagre R3 500 they have been subjected to for years,” Mnisi pointed out.

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