Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi faces mounting pressure to hire unemployed doctors, but he insists that budget constraints prevent any new appointments. File Picture: Bongani Shilubane / Independent Newspapers
HEALTH Minister Aaron Motsoaledi is standing his ground as the pressure is mounting on the Department of Health to hire unemployed doctors to address the shortage of healthcare workers.
This happens as unemployed doctors took to the streets this week demanding to be employed in Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape.
But, Motsoaledi said to hire doctors, you need resources.
“We have got serious austerity measures, very crippling budget cuts that affect not our capacity to hire doctors but to perform quite a large number of functions.
“Yes, we do agree with the grievances of doctors but in the final analysis, you cannot give a job for which you don’t have the means to pay such people and that is the situation we are in,” he said.
According to Motsoaledi, medical students who completed their internship and community service were fully fledged doctors who could go anywhere.
“If the state advertises posts, you can apply. If the post is in the private sector, you can apply. If you want to open a private practice, you can do so.”
He dismissed the notion that there should be absorption of unemployed doctors after completing community service.
“The only people who get absorbed are those fresh from university doing internship and fresh from internship doing community service, and after that you are a job seeker like any other.”
SA Medical Association Trade Union (SAMATU) general secretary Dr Cedric Sihlangu expressed deep concern and disappointment over the ongoing issue of unemployed doctors who have completed their community service.
“SAMATU has over the years engaged the National Department of Health (NDoH) to highlight the dire consequences that the department’s lack of strategy in retaining doctors post community service has on the public health system of our country.
“Each year, successive ministers of Health have acknowledged the gravity of this situation and the need to develop concrete strategies that would curb this issue from persisting. However, after so many years, we are yet to see a plan from the NDoH that speaks to addressing this issue,” Sihlangu said.
Sihlangu urged the Ministry of Health to urgently develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to employ these skilled doctors, ensuring that their talents are not wasted but instead directed toward fortifying our healthcare system.
“SAMATU remains committed to collaborating with all relevant stakeholders to find solutions and address this challenge.”
Yesterday, SAMATU marched in Mbombela to demand that the Mpumalanga provincial government hire the unemployed doctors in the province.
SAMATU provincial spokesperson, Dr Mandla Matshabe, said they have doctors dating as early as January 2024, who have been unemployed not only in Mpumalanga but also in KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape.
“We have a number of doctors who are willing to serve. They have stethoscopes ready to go to hospitals to serve the poor and the needy of our country, but unfortunately our government seems not to be coming to the playing field. Enough is enough,” Matshabe said.
He said the government must make a budget available for employing and paying doctors.
“We are not limiting it to doctors. They must make a budget available for employment of healthcare practitioners to ensure our people are served.”
Matshabe said they could not accept that there were austerity measures in a country that did not invest in its health.
“Each day we have severe cases that could be treated if we had enough manpower. We don’t want them to make funds available to employ doctors. How they do that is their baby to nurse,” he said.
One of the unemployed doctors, Dr Sihle Dube, who has completed his community service, said it was disheartening to be unemployed.
“Most of us are breadwinners in our families, so when I went to school, there was that hope that one day as a son, I will come back and help out in the family,” Dube said.
But, Motsoaledi is adamant that “you can’t hire people you are unable to pay”.
“Any employee anywhere in the world, public or private, will only hire people if you have got money to pay for that employment,” he said.
mayibongwe.maqhina@inl.co.za