NEHAWU CALLS ON THE PREMIER OF GAUTENG TO STOP NIT-PICKING WHEN ADDRESSING ISSUES AT CHRIS HANI BARAGWANATH HOSPITAL

NEHAWU has noted with curiosity and concern the reports by the CEO of the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, Ms J More and the Gauteng Premier, Ms Nomvula Mokonyane that there are saboteurs amongst workers at Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital who are intentionally fiddling with critical equipments in order to compromise the services to the people.

Firstly, the union wants to make it clear that it is totally against any such acts if they have occurred and is fully in support of an investigation to ascertain what happened. While we are behind efforts to investigate the allegations we are deeply worried that two senior leaders decided to invite the media to make these unsubstantiated allegations in public before talking to the workers. As an organisation that is passionate about defending the workers we find it disturbing that they proceeded to insinuate without presenting evidence that they suspected that this was an inside job.

Our union is deeply disappointed and suspicious of the premier's role in all of this because her nit-picking of problematic issues at the hospital makes us to question whether she is genuinely interested in solving the near crisis situation at Bara or is just lending credibility to a management under siege.

We are afraid that the premier risks being impeached by her own standards because when she assumed the office she made many promises that unfortunately remain unfulfilled. Workers have been consistently complaining that there is a lack of appropriate management at the hospital and that their working conditions and service delivery are negatively affected by the unilateral decisions of this management collective.

They have not heard anything from the premier until her sudden visit to the hospital to add her voice to cynical allegations that are based on nothing other than the management's contemptuous view of the workers. We openly challenge the premier to call the media and demand an investigation of all allegations of poor management, flouting of procedures by the management if she wants us to believe that she is motivated by service delivery.

After promising the people of Gauteng that she will be the premier who deals with fraudulence and incompetence of every type she has repeatedly ignored the calls of other stakeholders at Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital for intervention and help. She has made sure that the pessimistic management of the hospital uses her to divert the attention and scrutiny away from its failings and also that it basks in the Niagara of undiluted free publicity while casting distrustful and negative aspersions against its own employees.

NEHAWU wants to remind the management that we have consistently called for the total review of the outsourcing of security in hospitals because poorly trained and poorly paid workers cannot be expected to protect big institutions with many people coming in and out every day. We are disappointed that the management has not yet opened the maternity kitchen but we are increasingly seeing the increasing mushrooming of spaza shops inside the hospital.

Our union wants to reiterate the following demands:

• The management must put together a comprehensive and clear recruitment strategy to fill all funded vacant posts especially professional ones.
• They must open the closed maternity kitchen and also make sure that workers are not forced to perform jobs that are outside of their scope.
• We are calling for the immediate improvement of all sites of service delivery and demand that measures be taken to reduce long lines in hospitals.
•  Our union demands the immediate in-sourcing of security and other outsourced support functions at the hospital including the absorption of the workers who are currently performing those duties.
• We reiterate our fierce opposition to the use of Public-Private -Partnerships something that the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital management and the Gauteng Health department have been championing of late.
• The CEO should start taking full control and responsibility of the hospital and the union will no longer sit down in meetings with middle managers with no decision making powers.

NEHAWU's commitment to defending the workers and improving service delivery remains intact and we promise not to play at the margin in pursuit of improved service delivery for working class communities.

Statement issued by Sizwe Pamla, NEHAWU Secretariat Office, July 13 2011

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