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Unions have also adopted a resolution to encourage workers not to respond to emergencies during lunch. (Guillem Sartorio / AFP)
- Limpopo health sector unions resolved to resume the strike over a new task list system.
- Unions adopted a resolution to encourage workers not to respond to emergencies during lunch.
- The reason for this is that lunch time is not included in the working hours.
Seven health sector unions in Limpopo have resolved to resume the strike, accusing the authorities of breaching an agreement on the new task list system.
The intention to strike was initially suspended in early March this year to allow talks with the authorities. But, at a press conference in Polokwane on Friday, the unions indicated that the date of the strike would be announced in a march by workers to the offices of the prime minister and the health department.
SA’s Democratic Nursing Organization secretary Jacob Molepo said the unions have suspended all talks with health authorities until the department head, Dr. Thokozani Mhlongo, is removed from office.
Mhlongo is accused of “deliberately” misleading Dr. Phophi Ramathuba of the MEC de Salud and the unions regarding the new list of functions to be devised by line managers in each provincial facility.
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They are also demanding the dismissal of the deputy director general of health services, Dr. M. Dombo.
Molepo said line managers were threatened with disciplinary action if they wrote their own shift lists, rather than implementing centralized ones.
“We learned to our dismay that some of our critical resolutions from the consultative meetings were deliberately omitted from the two circulars, which include the resolution on the design of the task list by the line managers.
“… we never agreed on any kind of shift list because we were informed that it cannot be drawn up from a central point in the central office of the health department,” Molepo said.
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Unions have also adopted a resolution to encourage workers, including nurses and doctors, not to respond to any emergencies during lunch.
The reason is that lunch time is not included in the working hours according to the new task list. The unions also ruled that workers would ignore any instructions to work when off duty, “to avoid accusations of looting the departmental budget as HOD pointed out during its press conference.”
Health authorities have indicated that they are willing to continue talks with the unions.
Provincial health spokesman Neil Shikwambana said: “Obviously, you know that department officials are not hired or removed based on how the unions feel or resolve about it.”
He said the department expects all employees to meet their obligations or face consequences, within the law, for their actions.
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