Pretoria - The Gauteng Department of Health has stressed that it had exhausted all avenues to address grievances and claims made by contract health workers who have been camping at the district offices in Pretoria.
The department’s Motalatale Modiba said following allegations of unfair exclusion of contract community health workers from being contracted with SmartPurse, the department called on affected healthcare workers to submit claims.
Modiba said numerous investigations were conducted into the claims made by the former workers appointed between 2017 and 2019, and it was found there were 678 community healthcare workers who were re-contracted. He said 1 676 healthcare workers received back-pay stipends as a result of this process.
Modiba said there were still healthcare workers who could not be verified by pre-set criteria, with no evidence that they had continued working uncontracted and were unpaid.
“On allegations of unfair labour practices by SmartPurse, the department is not able to respond to that matter as it should be addressed directly by SmartPurse.
“As of July 2020, the department appointed all community healthcare workers on contract into permanent posts and since the appointments were effected, the department started receiving requests from people claiming to have been healthcare workers at some point when all verification processes had been concluded.”
Modiba said the department had exhausted all avenues available to it to address grievances made.
According to the department, they had permanently appointed all 8619 healthcare workers who were on its payroll as of July 2020, thereby fulfilling directives of the arbitration award.
Community healthcare workers said they had been waiting since 2016 to return to work.
Getrude Sebopa, from Soshanguve, said their problems began in 2016 after the department of health took on the SmartPurse Solutions contractor to manage community healthcare workers in the province.
She said that upon taking over, the company instituted unfair labour practices, such as denial of family responsibility leave for pregnant workers, or time off following birth.
The workers said the company had only partially fulfilled the instructions of an arbitration award given to them by the CCMA as 126 healthcare workers had been left out with no resumption date in sight.
The workers said they suspected their jobs had been sold or given to friends and relatives of persons working with the company.
Pretoria News