South African nurses have been showing up at work in pyjamas in recent weeks to press demands for uniform allowances — the latest sign of malaise in the health care system wracked by an exodus of medical staff.
The pyjama campaign began on March 15 in North West province and a month later, nurses in Gauteng, South Africa’s richest province which includes Johannesburg and Pretoria, joined in to press demands for an allowance to pay for the navy and white uniform.
”We have been negotiating for far too long, since 1997, and nothing is coming,” said Lesiba Seshoka, spokesperson of the main nurses union, the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (Denosa).
”If you are underpaid and overworked and have no money to buy clothes, why can’t you go in the clothes that you have, even if those are pyjamas?” she said.
”We want everybody to know that the government gives uniforms to police, prison warders, defense forces, but not to nurses,” says nurse Dudzile Makinta of Mabopane in North West province.
Most of the nurses at Soweto’s main Chris Hani-Baragwanath hospital are ”wearing their own colourful clothing” on duty, said nurse Fanny Mthembi.
In most of South Africa’s nine provinces, nurses must pay for their own uniform although they get a R4,5 (0,50 euros, 0,65 dollars) shoe allowance. The union is demanding an annual allowance of R1 500 (188 euros, 241 dollars) to pay for the uniform.
The South African Nursing Council, which is entrusted with maintaining professional standards, has warned in a statement that the nurses are ”liable to be charged for unprofessional conduct” if they keep up the pyjama campaign.
”Providing nursing care to patients in inappropriate attire is unprofessional and disrespectful to the patients and to their families,” it warned.
The pyjama protest comes amid unease in the health care profession as it grapples with a ”brain drain” that the unions says bleeds the system of some 300 nurses per month.
Most of the nurses find jobs in Britain and Saudi Arabia, according to union officials.
While the government has said it is ready to hold negotiations on the nurses’ complaints, the opposition charges that the issue of poor salaries must be addressed to shore up the health care system.
”It’s very sad that nurses have to resort to such undignified action. I think it shows how desperate they are to get the government’s attention,” says Jack Bloom, the opposition Democratic Alliance’s spokesperson on health issues.
”We are in the position now where people are advertising for nurses and they are not getting applicants at all. I don’t think we are saving money by paying nurses low wages because we spend a lot of money training them and then we lose them because we can’t retain them,” says Bloom. – Sapa-AFP