The health and public service ministers’ lack of response to the urgent court order to reinstate 41 healthcare workers shows their ”total disrespect for the rule of law and is characteristic of how government ministers are treating poor people and the courts”, says Zackie Achmat of the Treatment Action Campaign.
He was speaking outside the Cape Town Supreme Court where the TAC, five patients and parents of patients brought an urgent order to have the healthcare workers reinstated after they were dismissed by the health department for participating in the public service strike.
The action was brought against national Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, provincial Health Minister Pierre Uys and Western Cape head of health Craig Househam. Househam is the man who signed the notices announcing which workers had been fired.
Achmat criticised the fact that neither ministers nor health officials had deemed it necessary to respond, in affidavits, to the matter.
The department of health dismissed more than 100 healthcare workers last week for their participation in the strike. Forty percent of the workers fired are from clinics in Khayelitsha, where many people – most suffering from HIV, tuberculosis and asthma – receive their medication. This is what prompted the TAC to bring the court action.
The TAC argues that if the workers are not reinstated, there will be a long-term negative effect on the healthcare facilities in the area.
Supreme Court Judge Siraj Desai was stunned when the affidavit of a dismissed nurse with 20 years’ experience was put before the court. Referring to the nurse’s R2 500-a-month salary, Desai said, ”it must be a mistake”, to which counsel for the TAC, Peter Hodes, replied: ”That’s why they’re striking, your honour.”
Earlier in the week counsel for ministers Tshabalala-Msimang and Fraser-Moleketi, Marumo Moerane, argued that the matter should be heard in a labour court. Hodes argued that the case ”has nothing to do with labour, but — with people dying”. Desai agreed, saying it was a constitutional matter because the dismissals were affecting patients.