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The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] welcomes the appointment of Cde Montsheng Tsiu as a member of the executive council in the Free State Province. Cde Tsiu is the new MEC responsible for health. She served the union with dedication and diligence as a Provincial Chairperson of NEHAWU in the province.

As NEHAWU, we are confident that she will execute her new responsibility with aplomb. As a former director at the Department of Health responsible for nursing, she brings a wealth of experience after working most of her life in the healthcare sector as a health practitioner and a healthcare activist. We hope her background in the union will be in the benefit of workers who are in the main subjected to poor working conditions and indecent salaries.

A cadre of her stature is needed to decisively deal with the problems that are currently engulfing the public healthcare sector in the province. As part of her immediate tasks she must confront issues of outsourcing, understaffing, lack of working medical equipment, lack of medication and a demoralised workforce because of unpaid bonuses. We also believe that she will prioritise the implementation of NHI, and engage labour in the process. This has been a challenge in the past.

We wish her well in her new responsibility and we look forward to working with her in improving the public healthcare sector in the province.

Issued by NEHAWU