Johannesburg – A six-month-old baby died on Tuesday after being moved from one of the Gauteng Department of Social Development's Child and Youth Care Centres (CYCC) and placed at another care centre as a result of the strike by social workers.
This comes after 90 children were moved from the provincial CYCCs since there was no one to look after them because of the stoppage. The provincial department said the child was taken from Walter Sisulu CYCC in Soweto and placed at another care centre last week.
Gauteng Social Development MEC, Nandi Mayathula-Khoza, said the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) nation-wide social workers' strike was having a negative impact on the vulnerable beneficiaries of state care in Gauteng.
"The children were moved on Friday as striking workers barricaded entrances at the affected centres barring essential supplies such as food, medication and the laundry," the department said in a statement.
Nehawu members employed by the Department of Social Development earlier this month went on a full-blown strike across the country after negotiations over working conditions between with the employer collapsed. The union demands, among other things, the occupation specific dispensation for Social Service Professionals and Occupations, the introduction of rural allowance, the absorption of unemployed social workers on a permanent basis and many others.
Last month, Nehawu mounted a nation-wide protest action where it delivered a memorandum of demands but a solution to the dispute is yet to be reached.
Mayathula-Khoza would brief the media on Wednesday to an update to residents of Gauteng on details of the impact of the strike on the provinces' frail, the disabled and children who are dependent on the government for care.