Hundreds of fed-up, unemployed healthcare workers marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria on Monday, demanding jobs, no national budget cuts in the Health Department, and transparent placement lists. They also denied being fussy about rural placements.
One of the marchers, Dr Mumtaaz Emeran, who graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2020, said the process of applying for posts was “really terrible”.
“Everyone who is here right now has applied for posts; we have been called back for interviews, but you go to one interview, and there are 100 of you for one post.
“When you do get called back, if you do make it to the next phase they say, ‘Actually there is no funding for this post’… so it has been terrible.”
She told Daily Maverick it was a misconception that healthcare workers did not want to work in rural areas.
“That is a myth. I was placed in a rural hospital last year for community service and they could not retain me because there were no funds, so it’s not that doctors reject rural posts, it’s that there aren’t any posts in the rural areas for us.”
Crippled healthcare system
Dr Dzudzanani Marubini said: “I have applied for more than 50 posts and I have not received any call for any interview for those posts.”
He graduated from Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University in 2021, after which he completed a two-year internship in Mpumalanga and one year of community service in Limpopo. Since then, he has struggled to find a job.
Tshepo Mphahlele, a medical orthotics and prosthetics professional, said there was a high unemployment rate in her specialised field.
“I qualified in 2019 and I have been on and off doing locums since then, but no permanent employment,” she said.
No posts for dieticians
Nwabisa Yokwe, a registered dietician, is also unemployed. “We cannot go to school and end up with no work at all. We have families to support, we have responsibilities to pay for, so we really need work,” she said.
Yokwe lost her job in the private sector last year.
“I haven’t been able to get absorbed in government. I have been trying to apply … It has been very difficult for dieticians,” she said.
More than 500 dieticians in SA are unemployed, she said. “Since January, I have only seen two posts for dieticians in all of South Africa – and those are in the Northern Cape.”
Lack of human resources
Dr Joy Saville said after working in the public sector for the past three years, she had seen the impacts of the shortage of human resources.
“It is unacceptable that there are so many of us sitting without jobs when we could be servicing our communities,” she said. “We can’t have posts being frozen that should be occupied by medical professionals. It means our workload is much higher and the number of hours we work per month is much higher.”
On average, doctors work 240 hours a month, but these are just the recognised hours, and not all of those hours are remunerated, she said.
A total of 240 hours “is what it recognised and that doesn’t include your post-call hours where you are at the hospital till 12 o’clock after you have done a 24-hour shift”.
“We have all been applying everywhere; often we apply to hospitals without receiving any feedback at all. Many of us have applied to tons of hospitals and have not even been getting call-backs.”
Saville said people frequently asked why doctors choose not to work in the private sector.
“They (private sector) can only absorb so many of us, and again, it’s a number of platforms we have applied to – emergency departments, GP visits, home calls. We have applied for everything,” she said.
Government ‘has not planned’
Dr PT Matlala said the healthcare system was failing, and that the government’s lack of planning and foresight was partially to blame.
“We have been on this journey for nine years and they (the government) have not planned, and are using the excuse that we do not want to work in rural areas,” she said.
“It is a blatant lie that we don’t want to work in rural areas. That is where we grew up, that is where we come from, that is where we want to serve our people because that is where the struggle is.”
Matlala completed her community service in a rural hospital where she said there were no doctors, and patients were turned away. “Yet doctors are sitting at home, nurses are sitting at home.”
She has been applying for jobs since last July. “We don’t even get feedback. All we have been told is that they don’t have money to fund posts,” she said.
A memorandum was handed over to Philemon Mahlangu, an official from the President’s office at the Union Buildings. It included the following demands:
• No national budget cuts for healthcare;
• A budget increase for the health sector to accommodate all unemployed healthcare workers;
• A database of all healthcare workers completing community service must be captured and plans to accommodate all must be made;
• A transparent placement list;
• All placements must be completed before the end of each year; and
• Professionals want full-time work with full pay and benefits.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Unemployed doctors labelled ‘too fussy’ about job placements
More money to hire doctors but health sector still under pressure
Unions deny that young doctors are refusing rural jobs
Tight budgets hamper state employment of new doctors