Community health workers take health department to court
Dozens of community health care workers recently gathered outside the Johannesburg Labour Court as lawyers for the department and health workers pleaded their cases. Represented by lawyers from Werksmans Attorneys, community health workers are alleging the department violated labour law when advertised their jobs in early January without notice.
Subsequently, workers allege the department told them to re-apply for their jobs and that only some workers would be hired back, according to a letter sent by workers’ attorneys to Head of Gauteng Department of Health Dr Barney Selebano.
Health workers are now demanding that the Gauteng Department of Health rescind calls for health workers to re-apply for jobs and commit to keeping all current community heath workers employed by 18 February.
“As we stand here, some of us are going to lose their jobs as the department has told us to re apply for our jobs as they are in the process of employing new workers from outside,” said William Mokoena who is part of the community health worker forum, the Gauteng Community Health Care Forum.
Mokoena added that many community health workers relied on their monthly stipends to feed their families. He added that many workers were surprised when they were told that they had to re-apply for their posts.
Gauteng Community Health Care Forum Chairperson Zoleka Mbotshelwa alleged that the department has already stated it will not re-hire community health workers who do not have not completed Grade 9.
“The department doesn’t care about us and the trainings and the certificates they have provided to us,” she said. “They just told us that if we don’t have Grade 9, we must forget about our jobs.”
“We actually don’t understand the criteria they are using to recruit,” said Mbotshelwa, who added that after years of being outsourced through nongovernmental organisations, community health workers continue to demand permanent employment with the department.
Gauteng Department of Health Spokesperson Steve Mabona declined to comment on the issue because the matter remains before the court. Judgement in the case is expected later this week. – Health-e News.
An edited version of this story also appeared in The Star newspaper.
Author
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
Community health workers take health department to court
by jamesthabo, Health-e News
March 16, 2016
Related
A new strawberry-flavoured HIV treatment for children could improve adherence
A new paediatric antiretroviral uses a fixed-dose treatment and child-friendly flavours to help parents administering HIV treatment to their children.
Gauteng health facilities face shortages of crucial medication
Patients on chronic treatment left stranded as facilities in Gauteng face shortage of essential medicine.
SA’s shady food industry tactics puts ‘profit before people’
Researchers looking into the influence of the food and beverage industry on South Africa’s policy-making state that “increased transparency, disclosure, and awareness of industry strategies,” is needed to stop undue influence on the country’s public health programmes and policies.
One comment
I’m a male who is a C.H.W.s I started this work since 2010.