Treasury to allocate funds for jobless doctors - Phaahla
Health Minister Joe Phaahla says his department and Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana have found a solution to the issue of unemployed medical graduates.
He made the announcement during the debate on the State of the Nation Address on Tuesday afternoon.
This follows the public outcry over doctors who have completed statutory community service programmes but remain unemployed.
Phaahla says the deployment of appropriate Human Resources is key to both access and quality of services provided.
"I am therefore happy to announce that working with the Minister of Finance we have a solution to address the current challenge of doctors who want to stay in the public service but could not be offered funded posts.
"The details of how we are going to fund the posts will come out from Minister Godongwana’s Budget Speech next Wednesday.
"Our national team is working with National Treasury team to thrash out the details and working with provincial health departments to speed up the process, so that by 1st April 2024 all those who will not be already in posts can be able to start.
"I am confident that with this certainty provinces will be able to start giving appointment letters even before 1st April 2024," says Phaahla.
Phaahla said the assistance would give the health department sufficient breathing space to work on long-term solutions.
"This matter is a typical situation where the ANC-led government is a victim of its own successes. Over the last fifteen years we have ramped up the training of doctors both in the local universities and the Nelson Mandela Fidel Castro programme in Cuba.
"The number of graduates have almost doubled over the last ten years, in 2014 there were 1,338 graduates who entered internship while in 2022 there were 2 511 and this year there are 2,210 new medical interns, just around a thousand more graduates increase," he added.
Phaahla says his department will also work with medical association SAMA and the trade union SAMATU to look at more opportunities for doctors.
"This will include in multidisciplinary group practices offering primary health services in the community as we prepare for implementation of NHI, which will contract such services."
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