Medical staff who braved the pandemic on the frontlines at the Covid-19 field hospital in Brackengate stand to lose their jobs at the end of the month now that the hospital is to become a general transitional care facility.
A group of protesting nurses awaited the provincial health minister Dr Nomafrench Mbombo as she arrived for a visit to the facility on Friday morning.
The 128-bed facility, that has been allocated a R96 million operation budget for the 2023-’24 financial year, will offer intermediate care to medically stable patients to reduce the pressure on provincial hospitals.
Zolisa Menze, chair of the National Public Service Workers Union (NPSWU), says 209 staff members were employed on contracts by the provincial government in June 2020 to care for Covid-19 patients at the hospital.
“We were good enough to risk our lives, but now are viewed as not having the right skills? We worked hard and long hours during Covid and it took a toll on our emotional and mental health. We saw patients we cared for dying each day, and our colleagues getting very ill. I still have nightmares and wake up not being able to breathe. It was a traumatic experience. We feel we are not being appreciated,” she told TygerBurger on Friday.
In a letter of memorandum handed over to Mbombo, the union demands that the recruitment process aimed at replacing the staff members at Brackengate Hospital be scrapped, and the immediate absorption of the staff in their current positions.
They requested Mbombo to respond to their memorandum by this Friday.
In response to a media inquiry sent to Mbombo’s office, media spokesperson Luke Albert said the minister did receive a memorandum from the protesters detailing their demands and a response in this regard will be given to them in due course. Specific questions to the minister’s office went unanswered.
Source: News24