Budget constraints see Gauteng health facilities shed 8 000 contracts
More than 8000 people will be out of a job at the end of the month when their contracts with the Department of Health come to an end.
This after the department announced it would not renew the temporary Covid-19 posts owing to budget constraints.
Thousands of posts were created for various categories of healthcare workers at the peak of the Covid pandemic, including administrative and support staff, clinical, engineering, and nursing personnel.
The temporary contracts were initially for a 12-month period during the 2020/2021 financial year.
The contracts were extended for another year during the 2021/22 financial year.
But provincial health spokesperson Kwara Kekana said the department can no longer cover the costs after its Covid grant was slashed.
"Gauteng Department of Health received a Covid grant budget amount of R2.2 billion for compensation of employees to respond to the Covid -19 pandemic. The budget enabled the Department to appoint critical staff required since 2020 on contract.
"The initial grant amount has since been reduced to R1.1 billion for the 2022/23 financial year, as a result the department will not be able to renew all temporary contracts of various categories workers who were hired as part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic when their contracts end at the end of March 2022," Kekana added.
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On Thursday, staff at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto picketed outside the premises over staff shortages and budget cuts.
The hospital's Medical Advisory Committee chairperson, professor Mmampapatla Ramokgopa, lamented the facility's inability to operate optimally.
"We know that Covid has now quietened down but we don't know what is going to happen come this winter and going forward.
"They are doing this without any plan whatsoever. All that they're saying is that on March 31, those people must just disappear. As to what is going to happen to this hospital that cannot collect is own waste material, the hospital that cannot provide bread for patients, the hospital that is so dirty that we don't have enough cleaners, the hospital where we don't have enough porters, the young doctors and nurses are pushing the patients," Ramokgopa added.
The EFF has also added its voice of concern on the state of the province's health facilities.
"The EFF condemns the cruel and inhumane conditions that patients are subjected to at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Johannesburg, Gauteng. A hospital notorious for its poor infrastructure and services has reached a chilling low, with reports that there are no food supplies for patients,” the party said in a statement
"This failure by the Department of health is insensitive, neglectful and barbaric."
The red berets want the department to step in.
"The EFF calls for an immediate intervention by the Department of Health in the torture that patients at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital are being subjected to. There must be an immediate allocation of funds to remedy the crisis, because the interventions of doctors and nurses, who are purchasing food for patients is not sufficient."
