NEHAWU DEATH STRIKE
A doctor’s plea – ‘If you are pissed off with the minister, go and occupy his office’
A doctor, who has been working almost non-stop at Tshepong Hospital in Klerksdorp, spoke to Daily Maverick on Tuesday morning amid desperate pleas from the hospital as strikers stopped staff from entering the premises.
The WhatsApp landed early on Tuesday morning:
Strike still on!!!
Pts had no nurses for 2 days
Urine bags exploding (overfilled)
Diabetics not getting insulin
Routine meds not given
Bedridden pts with messed beds not being changed or fed
This is a travesty
Nurses intimidated, so not going to work
Human dignity and rights lost
We require urgent assistance ensuring safety of staff entering hospitals to provide services
Uncertain how a few docs can nurse, care and support 400 pts
A few nurses are attending to patients at Tshepong Hospital in Klerksdorp on 07 March 2023, NEHAWU members are picketing outside the hospital. Photo: Felix Dlangamandla
Later, the Tshepong Hospital doctor spoke to Maverick Citizen Editor Mark Heywood:
“Our patients are not getting their medicines. They are meant to get them four, six or eight hourly or daily. Fortunately, the pharmacists are helping us to package medicines in a way so that the doctors can administer them to patients. For example, we have to mix IV meds, but we haven’t mixed IV meds in our lives.
Dirty blankets hanging and rubbish not collected at Tshepong Hospital in Klerksdorp on 07 March 2023, NEHAWU members are picketing outside the hospital.Photo: Felix Dlangamandla
“But still we are not able to monitor patients, which nurses do, and ensure that they are getting fluids for dehydration and so on. Certain patients, like stroke patients, need help with feeding which they are not getting.
Visit Daily Maverick’s home page for more news, analysis and investigations
“Fifth-year medical students are helping.
Read in Daily Maverick: Nehawu strike continues despite second interdict, leaving health facilities reeling”
Read in Daily Maverick: Wage strike hammers health services across the country”
“I ask myself why previously black hospitals are always the worst hit. It appears as if nothing is happening, no maintenance, broken equipment and roofs and things are getting worse. That’s a reflection that the previously dispossessed are the currently dispossessed.
“It seems that according to Nehawu, black lives don’t matter. These people they are hurting are the dispossessed.
“We begged our nursing colleagues to keep the wards open. They were amenable, but the provincial and national Nehawu people are not allowing any compromise. I bet they don’t use the public health system themselves.
Read in Daily Maverick: Too early to call in the army, Health Department says as hospitals buckle under violent protests
“It’s actually not a nursing strike. It’s a Nehawu strike. Most nurses here are not even Nehawu members. They belong to Hospersa. Nehawu’s members are the cleaners, admin clerks and so on.
Dirty linen in the passages at Tshepong Hospital in Klerksdorp on 07 March 2023, NEHAWU members are picketing outside the hospital. Photo: Felix Dlangamandla
“A lot of us are sympathetic with the nurses’ demands, but not with their methods.
“If you are pissed off with the minister, go and occupy his office and stay there like in the old days. Avoid using the most vulnerable people as blackmail. You can’t use the helpless and vulnerable to get your point across. That’s totally wrong,” the doctor said. DM/MC
“I bet they don’t use the public health system themselves.” Why punish their own people for failure of the Government they voted for ??
The only way to stop this nonsense is to take as heavy-handed as possible action against senior Nehawu members. Surely there’s enough in this report to warrant the laying of serious criminal charges ? But our government has a long history of allowing such abuses against its own people in the interests of placating the hoodlums within the ranks of the labour movement. We can’t even say “black lives matter”. No lives matter as we see time and time again. Remember Esidimeni!
Unions should be part of every functioning economy. However, the behaviour of SA union is pure thuggery.