The ongoing nurses’ strike at Dora Nginza Regional Hospital in Gqeberha has highlighted why essential services staff, such as nurses, doctors, and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) employees, are lawfully prohibited from going on unscheduled strikes.
The consequences have been devastating. The provision of normal healthcare services has been severely impacted, and it is alleged that unnecessary loss of life has occurred, specifically in Maternity wards.
I have submitted parliamentary questions to MEC Ntandokazi Capa to establish the extent of the loss of life of pre- and post-natal infants, as well as mothers in the facility, since the strike began last Wednesday. I have also requested a full breakdown of the disciplinary steps that the Eastern Cape Department of Health will take against the instigators of the strike and the perpetrators of criminality at the hospital.
Health MEC Capa must provide answers. She must account for any deaths in the facility since the strike began and explain what steps she has taken to rectify the situation and hold those responsible to account.
The strike turned violent after agency nurses, who were brought in to normalise healthcare services to patients, were forcibly and violently dragged out of wards by striking staff to prevent them from doing their work and caring for patients.
It is unfathomable that workers, who have taken a pledge to provide compassionate, ethical and competent care to all patients, would resort to such criminal behaviour due to an overtime dispute with the department. This is a disgrace to their profession.
Sadly, this kind of behaviour by so-called professional employees is yet another consequence of cadre deployment. When people are placed in positions through political patronage instead of skills, experience and competence, it is the patients who suffer the consequences.
Until the Eastern Cape Department of Health adopts a culture of hiring fit-for-purpose professionals as opposed to incompetent, corrupt and callous cadres, and until they start laying criminal charges against perpetrators, this criminal behaviour will continue.
Healthcare services cannot be measured in reports and meetings: it is the lived reality of patients that should be the guiding light that shapes how such crucial services should be delivered. At Dora Nginza, that lived reality has become a nightmare.
The people of the Eastern Cape deserve to live a life of hope and dignity. The patients at Dora Nginza have been stripped of both. The department has failed the patients of this province and must be placed under administration before more lives are lost unnecessarily.