Placement of health practitioners gives cause for concern – Solidarity Youth
10 January 2019
Solidarity Youth, Solidarity trade union’s youth wing, today expressed its concern about the placement process being followed by the Department of Health in deploying recently graduated health practitioners for service at hospitals for the year 2019.
“This process had to be completed in 2018 but scores of doctors, nurses, dentists and other health practitioners, who have recently graduated, have not yet been placed, and this more than a week after they were meant to have started work,” Paul Maritz, Solidarity Youth Co-ordinator, said.
According to Maritz, it is disturbing that a country such as South Africa where there is such a major need for trained medical professionals, is treating graduated professionals in such a way.
“In some cases, the practitioners had to relocate to centres hundreds of kilometres further afield, only to find out that there aren’t positions for them, contrary to what the national system indicated,” Maritz added.