Despite working long hours and over the 80-hour overtime limit for the month, dozens of doctors working for Gauteng Health did not receive their full salaries for January, with those at the Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital being short-paid R15,000, reports City Press.
Doctors with financial commitments have been forced to make alternative arrangements, as no one can tell them when the outstanding amounts will be paid. One doctor said they’d had the very same issue in 2021. He said it was a “yearly problem in January”.
Other doctors said Gauteng wasn’t the only province with this issue, with some public healthcare workers only receiving their full pay in February. In response, Gauteng Health said: “We are looking into it. As soon as we get feedback from facility HR, we will send responses.”
SA Medical Association (SAMA) vice-chairperson Dr Mvuyisi Mzukwa said the government could not expect doctors to continue providing patients with good quality healthcare in an ailing healthcare system when their basic needs were not being met. ”It continues to kill the morale of doctors in the country. How can you be in a pandemic and work so hard and you don’t get paid?”
In KwaZulu-Natal, the provincial health department’s assets were attached in September, after medical doctors instituted legal action against the department for unpaid allowances.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Doctors must not work until they are paid – Sama
Eastern Cape Health ordered to pay 6 doctors' salaries
Motsoaledi says he is 'highly distressed' over unpaid junior doctors