Cape Town - The EFF has told Health and Wellness MEC Nomafrench Mbombo that the outsourcing of hospital porter services by the department amounts to “financial exploitation”.
Speaking during a debate on the issue, EFF MPL Melikhaya Xego said the department outsourced porter services to outside agencies for an hourly rate in line with the national minimum wage but that the agencies took commissions from that hourly rate.
He said it meant the workers ended up earning less than the minimum wage.
Xego said: “The department cannot claim that it is not aware of this modern-day slavery practice as itself is an indirect slaver of these workers.
“Another reason the department is doing all this, is to avoid paying worker benefits.”
Xego asked Mbombo what her department was doing to employ workers such as porters who have been working for the hospital indirectly through agencies.
Mbombo said the department had no plans to insource hospital porter services at the Groote Schuur Hospital where over 100 outsourced porters were dismissed in February this year and that the department was not involved in labour disputes between contracted suppliers and their staff.
She said outsourcing staff was a business decision that allowed a hospital to fulfil its mandate and previously the personnel were simply transferred from the old service provider to the new service provider which led to a number of porters working at the hospital for more than 20 years.
She said: “On an already pressurised system, the decision to outsource can have the advantage of leveraging resources and can allow the department to capitalise on the expertise needed for a particular service.”
Contributing to the debate Good, Party MPL Shaun August said workers being exploited by agencies contracted by the department went against labour practices, laws and regulations in place to protect workers from such harmful behaviour.
Provincial ANC health spokesperson Rachel Windvogel proposed that the Health standing committee chairperson, Wendy Kaizer-Philander (DA), call an urgent committee meeting to discuss the department’s over reliance on agency personnel and more specifically the contracts for porters in the province’s hospitals.