KZN premier offers just 20 posts for unemployed doctors

The KwaZulu-Natal government will advertise 20 posts within the next week to address the growing unemployment crisis among healthcare professionals in the province.

Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane announced this while speaking to unemployed doctors on Wednesday who had been staging a sit-in outside the KwaZulu-Natal premier’s office in Pietermaritzburg since Monday.

The protesters gathered to express frustrations over the delay in advertising doctors’ posts in the province despite promises earlier this year by the national government to fill new positions.

In April health minister Aaron Motsoaledi announced the department had budgeted R1.78bn for 1,200 posts for doctors, 200 nurses’ positions and 250 other vacancies.

Finance minister Enoch Godongwana had made provisions for 800 unemployed doctors during his budget speech in March, before that budget was rejected.

Addressing the unemployed doctors on Wednesday, premier Thami Ntuli — who adjourned a cabinet meeting to attend to the matter with Simelane — explained that problems with budget processes at national level, which trickled down to provinces, were the main reason for the delay in employing them and called for patience until the processes were concluded.

Simelane said the posts announced by the national government were still in their hands and the provincial department could advertise them only after getting the go-ahead from head office.

“We want to make it clear those 800 posts form part of a national process, which is being handled at the level of the ministers of health, finance and parliament. KwaZulu-Natal, like all other provinces, will receive a portion of those posts. Once national has finalised that process and informed us how many posts we will receive, we will immediately advertise them.”

She said her department became aware last year they wouldn’t have sufficient funds in this financial year to employ doctors completing their community service and brought it to Ntuli’s attention. Ntuli and Simelane then took it to the president, who referred it to his cabinet.

“As part of that, the president engaged his own cabinet to say ‘go and look for extra funding for the province’ (but) because they can’t deal with just one province they then said it’s for national, so the 800 that was spoken of by the minister of finance is in relation to national government. The national department of health will decide what KZN gets,” she said.

Simelane said the department had approached Ntuli for help in addressing the unemployment challenge.

“In the meantime, we spoke to the premier to ask if he could give us anything and that amounted to the 20 posts we will be advertising because that is what the province has. The premier is going to approve this today [Wednesday] and we will advertise in the next seven days.”

She said the financial struggles facing the department were rooted in the broader fiscal challenges in the country which have resulted in significant budget cuts in provinces.

KwaZulu-Natal has lost more than R63bn in the past five years from its baseline budget, with the health department losing R14bn.

“That has greatly affected our ability to expand our staff complement. Nonetheless, we continue to prioritise engagements with the National Treasury and other stakeholders to unlock resources.”

Ntuli said the challenges were inherited but the province was working hard to resolve them.

“We have to be honest with you; we don’t have magic (but) we have to subject ourselves to a process that will deliver the expectations we put forward.”

Simelane appealed for calm while the department continued to liaise with doctors and healthcare workers on various pertinent matters.

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