News24 writes that members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) celebrated International Day for Decent Work by marching to Gate Way Clinic in Mthatha, where they handed over a petition to the MEC for the Department of Health, Nomakhosazana Meth, demanding security, recently. COSATU secretary of the OR Tambo Region, Pumla Mzantsi, said in February this year that members of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU) had hosted a march where they were launching a Public Service Delivery Campaign, and called on Meth to give her their grievances. Mzantsi indicated that NEHAWU members said that this department was in a bad situation. According to her, they complained about the shortage of workers, lack of resources, and lack of safety in hospitals and clinics.

“Today we are looking at the decent work, since members of COSATU decided to intervene in those grievances. She said that they also wanted Meth to speed up the process of National Health Insurance (NHI) because the OR Tambo Region was identified as the pilot, and now it is in an implementation process. Mzantsi said that they wanted to see the progress in this process before April next year. She added that the National Health Act (NHA) made it clear that the hospitals and clinics should be of a good standard. According to her, they saw that the Gate Way Clinic was still far from reaching that standard. Meth said that they were aware of the situation, but the budget will not allow them to do everything at once. “We are aware of your grievances, and we are making sure that we do all that we can to solve those issues. “The problem is the budget that we have; it does not allow us to solve these issues at once,” said Meth.

by Babalwa Ndlanya