More than 200 newly qualified nurses finishing their community service at state hospitals in Gauteng province are not being absorbed into permanent posts as happened previously. The Citizen reports that this is according to the Democratic Alliance (DA) who cited a list of 16 out of 36 public hospitals in Gauteng where community service nurses had been told to find employment elsewhere, including Charlotte Maxeke Hospital in Johannesburg where it said 62 jobs would be terminated at the end of February.
Other hospitals discharging large numbers of nurses were Tambo Memorial, Rahima Moosa, Edenvale, Thelle Mogoerane, Bertha Gxowa, Yusuf Dadoo, South Rand, Jubilee, Tara H Moross, Tshwane District, Bheki Mlangeni, West Rand, Kopanong, Cullinan Care Centre, and Weskoppies.
DA shadow member of the executive council for health in Gauteng Jack Bloom said in the report: “A total of 216 nurses face unemployment if they cannot get jobs in the private health sector, as the Gauteng Health Department has advised them to do.
“It makes no sense to spend huge amounts of money on training nurses, but not employing them, even though there is a large shortage of nurses in public hospitals.”
The DA said the cost of training a professional nurse for four years was more than R500,000, after which they would do one year of community service.
[link url="https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/government/2058467/over-200-newly-qualified-nurses-deprived-of-jobs-says-da/"]The Citizen report[/link]