After bringing the largest casualty unit in the province to its knees over the past two weeks, hospital cleaners, porters and laundry workers returned to their jobs on Monday 15 June as the Health Department agreed to pay unrestricted overtime until severe staff shortages at Livingstone Hospital Port Elizabeth were addressed.
Daily Maverick quotes the superintendent-general of Eastern Cape Health, Dr Thobile Mbengashe, as saying they were trying to bring stability to the hospital which serves as one of three COVID-19 facilities in the province, and that senior personnel would be sent from Bisho to address the issues. “It is not only the cleaning that was a problem. There is also a severe backlog of orders for supplies that we have to deal with,” he said.
The report says Livingstone Hospital’s permanent management team was suspended 18 months ago after a strike by National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) members, and since then the facility has had seven acting CEOs.
Mbengashe said the go-slow by general assistants was triggered by a misunderstanding over overtime. “We are not allowed to pay more than 30% of a staff member’s salary in overtime. But we realised that there are severe staff shortages so we had no choice. Those workers refused to go even one extra mile for us,” he said.
Daily Maverick reports that the protest comes as the appointment of a hundred general assistants at Eastern Cape hospitals, promised in April when President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the facility, is yet to be finalised. “They are being recruited as we speak,” Mbengashe said. “We are giving them one-year contracts.” “We should have made provision for overtime until then,” he said.
“I really regret what happened at Livingstone Hospital. That is not how we wanted to manage our hospital,” he said.
Union protests at the had brought the hospital to the brink of collapse, with casualty closed and nurses, doctors and even patients having to resort to cleaning, washing dishes, serving food, as well as smuggling out laundry to wash at home.
Business Day reports that Livingstone Hospital has 26 COVID-19 patients and, as the primary site where people who contract the coronavirus are due to be treated, it’s bracing for many more. But in recent days, the hospital has been a mess. The National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu), which represents hospital cleaners, kitchen staff and porters, has been protesting about the non-payment of overtime allowances. They refused to wash laundry this month and on Saturday, tensions ratcheted up when strikers blocked the entrance to the hospital.
Morale is also low, with more than 100 vacant doctors and nurses posts, meaning each medical professional is doing the work of three people, writes Business Day's Katharine Child. The protests have led to "a farcical situation where doctors tried to smuggle laundry out of the hospital so they could wash it at home, while surgeons took to washing their own surgical gowns … Effectively, this amounts to shutting down the hospital, since patients cannot be operated on or treated without clean sheets or surgical gowns."
Cole Cameron, CEO of the blood cancer NGO Igazi, is quoted in Business Day as saying that as epidemiologists predict a surge in cases in the Eastern Cape, “our main Livingstone hospital is on the brink of collapse – it was before COVID-19, but it has been exacerbated”.
Patients being turned away at the casualty unit, rubbish piling up in the passages and staff on a go-slow. The Times reports that this was the situation at the hospital on Friday of last week as tensions lasting several weeks between unions and hospital management over the non-payment of overtime to non-clinical staff began to boil over.
A nurse who works at the hospital, and who asked not to be named, is quoted as saying that the newspaper that nursing staff had now resorted to cleaning, washing dishes and serving up for patients on their own. “Our general assistants are refusing to work. They come to work every morning, clock in and don’t do their work. We have no clean linen, patients are sleeping on bare mattresses, and we’ve even had to sweep, clean and dish up food for patients ourselves. As a result, the patients are also chipping in and are assisting in cleaning the ward themselves.”
Nehawu general secretary Zola Saphetha visited Livingstone Hospital on Friday along with provincial secretary Miki Jaceni. Saphetha said the visit formed part the union’s national programme to monitor the application of World Health Organisation recommendations as well as COVID-19 measures put in place by the government.
“We had invited the Eastern Cape Health MEC and the superintendent general to hear how far they are in responding to the issues raised by workers and also their own response to the pandemic,” he said.
[link url="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-06-17-eastern-cape-hospital-turned-into-a-serious-health-hazard-during-protest-action/#gsc.tab=0"]Full Daily Maverick report[/link]
[link url="https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/features/2020-06-15-as-cases-spike-unions-create-chaos-at-eastern-capes-livingstone-hospital/"]Full Business Day report[/link]
[link url="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2020-06-14-hospital-patients-forced-to-pitch-in-with-cleaning/"]Full report in The Times[/link]