Hundreds of patients were turned away from at least one Gauteng Department of Health clinic in Soweto this week after nurses refused to work any more overtime until they were paid.
The nurses at Zola clinic are expected to work 33 hours of overtime a week in addition to their 40 regular hours, but claim they have not been paid for overtime work since November. Many say they have also not been paid their normal salaries regularly.
Jacob Letlhaka, a nurse at Zola clinic, says that the nurses had met with provincial officials to discuss their overtime hours and pay.
”We started working overtime about five years ago,” said Letlhaka. ”We stopped working overtime last Friday and will continue with this protest until all the nurses here have been paid for their overtime.” Letlhaka says some nurses have not been paid since November, but their complaints have fallen on deaf ears.
”Management hasn’t given us any reasons why they haven’t been paying us. We have just not been getting our overtime pay,” Letlhake said. He says the nurses submit claims for overtime every month.
”Management blames the clerks and the clerks say they don’t get our claim forms, but we give them claim forms,” Letlhaka said.
Hundreds of patients have had to return to the clinic day after day before they are treated since the nurses stopped working overtime.
Letlhaka says the nurses are the only employees who are not being paid overtime. ”The doctors and the cleaners get their money on time,” he says.
”Many nurses are relocating to the United Kingdom because of problems like these.”
Sarah Dass, deputy director of the Department of Health in the West Rand region, says the nurses had not been paid because a new payment system had been implemented in April.
”We were changing from an overdraft system to a system where money needed to be in the bank first before we could pay the staff,” she said.
Dass could not explain why problems had arisen only with the payment of nurses’ salaries. She said that she was unaware of any clinics apart from Zola that were having problems.
”I don’t know what happened in Zola clinic. The other clinics understood what was going on and kept working their overtime,” Dass said. Letlhaka said that the nurses had not been told about any recent changes in the system of payment.
”They never talk to us,” he said. ”The only payment system we know of is the Persal system which was implemented three years ago.”
He said that management had been told as far back as November last year about nurses who had not been paid.
”They are lying, these people. We’ve been complaining since January about not being paid overtime.”
”Management was not made aware of any problems the nurses had until recently,” said Barileng Dibakoane, the department’s regional communications officer.
She said that management had reached an agreement with nurses that they would only be paid their backdated overtime after the new payment system had been implemented.
Some nurses were paid this week, days after the Mail & Guardian began its investigation.
”The clerk came this morning and gave me my payslip and said we could even go and check that the money was in the bank,” Letlhaka said on Wednesday.
”Staff members [at clinics] who have been working overtime will definitely be paid,” Dibakoane said this week.
”The matter has been resolved and they will be paid in a few days.”