/ 9 June 2003

Cuban doctors’ problem cured

Locally deployed Cuban doctors who refuse to pay the compulsory 57% of their salaries to their government or send their 15-year-old children back to their motherland, can do so without fear of being fired from South African hospitals.

This was the interpretation of Ishana Hassim, the attorney for some of the seven Cuban doctors who won a Labour Court application reversing a Limpopo health department decision to fire them from various provincial hospitals earlier this year.

The court ruled that the doctors could be refused the right to practice only if they had been deregistered by the Health Professions Council.

The Limpopo Health Department fired the doctors, saying they had violated the terms of a government-to-government agreement between South Africa and Cuba by either seeking permanent residence status, marrying South Africans or refusing to send back to Cuba their children who had turned 15.

The agreement also provided that the doctors would pay their government 57% of their earnings in South Africa.

In February the Limpopo health department’s senior general manager Dr Morwamphaga Nkadimeng sent letters to the seven doctors terminating their employment.

”Having opted out of the agreement it follows that he can no longer be treated under the conditions of the said agreement. This equally implies that the condition of his registration with the Health Pro- fessions Council of South Africa has also lapsed,” Nkadimeng wrote in one letter to a hospital superintendent.

The hospital was also ordered to inform the doctors to produce proof of registration with the Health Professions Council within 48 hours or leave the hospitals and the accommodation provided for them.

Department spokesperson Alu-wani Netsianda said they were still studying the judgement and waiting for the Health Professions Council’s discussion on the matter before deciding on the next step.

One of the doctors, Jorge Luis Perez-Donato, said he was relieved to see the back of the case.

”I did not believe that after seven years of serving in South Africa we would have to fight so hard to demonstrate our loyalty. It is very difficult to understand why we had to spend so much money going to the high courts when we could have used our mental energies to treat our patients,” said Dr Perez-Donato.

Hassim accused Nkadimeng of refusing to sign the work permit application of some of the doctors.

”Now we are forced to ask for an order that a warrant of arrest to jail Nkadimeng is issued or that he sign the application,” said Hassim.