Health minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has announced the creation of more than 5,300 posts in a huge health recruitment drive – 500 of them in the Eastern Cape.
The announcement came at a time when the legislature health portfolio committee visited a number of hospitals and clinics and demanded urgent responses to problems it had discovered.
The employment opportunities announced by Motsoaledi are for clinical and support staff in provincial departments, ranging from doctors and specialists to artisans and cleaners across the country.
In the Eastern Cape, posts are expected to be filled starting in January 2019.
They include 36 posts for doctors, three specialists, 74 nurses, 100 nursing assistants, and 320 for general workers, porters and mortuary workers.
Provincial health spokesperson Lwandile Sicwetsha would only say: “Our human resources department is busy today. Everything on appointments comes from that unit. All such information comes from human resources chief directorate.”
The health portfolio committee has given the department a deadline to address medical challenges at the Butterworth Hospital, citing a lack of equipment and staff shortages.
In October, the portfolio committee, led by Mxolisi Dimbaza, released a report after visiting hospitals and clinics in the Amathole district as part of the Taking Legislature to the People campaign.
Dimbaza’s report told the department to urgently explore ways of picking up the service at Mthatha depot facilities within 30 days after the adoption of the report by the legislature.
The committee ordered the department to improve the staffing ratio at clinics “so as to alleviate the burden on nurses” and demanded a plan to deal with the staff shortages to also be submitted within the 30-day period.
At Butterworth Hospital, the committee said they found problems with expenditure rates and urged the department to demonstrate its efforts at ensuring proper management.
The committee found that the Amathole district was short of 60 ambulances. It was running 28 out of a required 88, according to the official ambulance-to-population ratio.
The committee found no urgency to hire staff to fill vacant posts.
“No meaningful psychological support is being offered to emergency medical staff despite the traumatic experiences they undergo in responding to horrifying scenes.”
The committee demanded “comprehensive, time-bound and costed plans”.
Sicwetsha said: “We are aware of the report from the portfolio committee.”
“The department would be submitting a response to the report soon, but only after the MEC had signed and submitted the responses"...