Unions mount pressure to open KZN’s Dr Pixley Ka Isaka Seme Hospital

The Dr Pixley Ka Isaka Seme Memorial Hospital at Bridge City, KwaMashu.

The Dr Pixley Ka Isaka Seme Memorial Hospital at Bridge City, KwaMashu.

Published Feb 11, 2021

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Durban - UNIONS are mounting pressure on KwaZulu-Natal Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu to fast track the opening of the Dr Pixley Ka Isaka Seme Hospital in KwaMashu.

The minister said the department was held back by Covid-19 restrictions and they had now hired additional data capturers to deal with the two hundred thousand job applications it received.

The Public Servants Association (PSA) provincial manager Mlungisi Ndlovu has called for the speeding up of recruitment processes, to open the R2.8 billion facility and increase the bed capacity in the province’s battle against Covid-19 and other diseases.

“This first batch of 1 553 vacancies was advertised on 19 October 2020. These positions should have been filled by 1 January. The PSA is extremely disappointed by the failure of the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health’s human resources division to finalise and fill in the advertised positions. Health workers at other hospitals in the area are under severe pressure,” Ndlovu said.

Democratic Nursing Organisation of SA (Denosa) provincial secretary Mandla Shabangu told the SABC there were two containers in KwaMashu that were full of job applications. Another batch is at Natalia building in Pietermaritzburg.

National Education Health and Allied Workers' Union (Nehawu) provincial secretary Ayanda Zulu said the opening of the hospital would assist the public healthcare system in Durban tremendously.

Simelane-Zulu said the heads of department discussed the issue with the unions at their monthly meetings. She explained that contractors had difficulty sourcing building material due to the lockdown restrictions because many companies were closed. The department had to intervene to expedite the sourcing of materials.

She said the hospital was ready to be utilised in May, if the need arose, for Covid-19 patients with 450 out of the 500 beds available. The other 50 beds were reserved for the psychiatric department.

Simelane-Zulu said the hospital was part of the more than 6 000 beds in the province to deal with Covid-19 patients.

“We were not able to recruit everyone at that time (lockdown). We will use some of the staff that has been employed with the Covid-19 contracts that we currently have within the department. In August and September, the department started a proper recruitment process once the peak of Covid passed. They concluded the hiring of management,” said Simelane-Zulu.

Of the 1 400 vacancies, the majority are non-clinical posts.

“Applicants in the past accused departments of throwing away CV’s. We are capturing each applicant on a database. This is a tedious task. An additional 10 data capturers were hired with more to be recruited to ensure the capturing process is done in shifts. Once capturing is done, we will start short-listing and then interviewing applicants. By March 1, those selected will go for a month-long induction workshop,” Simelane-Zulu explained.

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