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The Health and Allied Workers Indaba Trade Union (HAITU) has noted that the Department of Health in KwaZulu-Natal is inviting prospective students to apply for nursing training for the year 2024. The last date to submit an application is the 31st of August. This training is for nurses who want to qualify for a Diploma in Nursing, NQF level 6 qualification. 

As HAITU we are asking ourselves what is the point of this training when there are large numbers of nursing students who completed the R171 and the R425 diploma course in nursing, and most of them are frustrated because they are sitting at home unemployed? We have to ask what the motives of the provincial and, the national health department are, because it seems to us, that this training is to create the illusion that nursing students will be employed at a later stage, and we know this is not true. They are setting up these young people and giving them false hope of future employment, when they know very well that they will not even hire them after they complete their training. This is how the government creates the illusion of job creation in the community and in the minds of young people in this country. 

As HAITU we have seen this play out in other provinces, like in Gauteng, where every year, students are trained, only for them to sit at home for months after completing their training. What is most painful, is that we have a dire shortage of qualified health care workers and this is a crisis all over the country, and it affects every single province. 

According to a report by IOL published in May last year, we have at least 10 831 vacancies for nurses and 1330 unfilled posts for doctors. KwaZulu-Natal has the highest number of nurse vacancies in the country - at least 3603 posts have not been filled. What we have experienced instead is massive job shedding and terminations of contracts, and this is why we are suspicious about the motives of the department. It seems this is just politicking ahead of the national elections so they can continue to pretend they are doing something about the drastic shortages, when they are doing nothing. 

This selfish ANC led government, insists on misleading young people and feeding them false hope with theses adverts. They have no political will to fill vacancies because they have implemented an austerity budget and placed severe restrictions on spending, which prevents the department from being able to adequately fill all the vacant posts. 

This is why our hospitals and clinics are permanently understaffed, and full to capacity. We never have enough human resources and this means hundreds of patients are turned away every day, even though they would have waited for hours for treatment. Our nurses and doctors are permanently overworked, exhausted and stretched to capacity. It is extremely difficult to deliver the best patient care under such conditions.  

This is why HAITU is planning a mega march to the Department of Health in KwaZulu-Natal to demand that the MEC must give us a detailed explanation of exactly how and when they plan to employ the hundreds of recent graduates from nursing colleges in the province. We demand that they give us exact time-lines for them to be fully employed, and they must specify which hospitals and clinics they will be deployed to when they complete their studies. We will also demand that they must be employed permanently, and not on contract because their services are desperately needed in our communities. 

The march will be taking place on Wednesday 16 August and we will hand over a memorandum of demands to Nomagugu Simelane the MEC of Health in the province. The media is invited to attend the protest. We will be sending out more details of the venue and the start time of the march closer to the date. 

Issued by HAITU President Rich Sicina