Johannesburg - More than 280 qualified medical interns are anxiously sitting at home unemployed awaiting placement for their mandatory internship at public health facilities.
There are about 288 medical interns, who graduated between March and April, who are waiting to be allocated placements from July 1.
The medical interns, who spoke to The Star on condition of anonymity, said they applied for placements in April and were expected to receive their allocations on June 11.
One intern said that she verified her information for placement with the department's Internship Community Service Programme (ICSP) in April and was expecting to be placed last month, but hasn’t heard anything.
“It has been a very difficult time for my family to have one more mouth to feed when they were expecting me to be working already,” she said.
The doctor added that the costs of having to constantly call or email the Department of Health and ICSP to enquire about placement was becoming hard on her pocket.
“It’s also very depressing to sit at home and not work. I would not wish this on anyone, because we can't even work at other hospitals or look for work ourselves,” she said.
In an email, seen by The Star, sent to the doctor on Friday, the ICSP management told her that there was a shortfall of posts as a result of increased intake for the midyear cycle due to extension of the academic year at higher education institutions as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“They keep giving us excuses and we don’t trust them,” the doctor said.
SA Medical Association chairperson Dr Angelique Coetzee confirmed that out of the 288 interns, about 118 have already been placed and a further 213 posts were available.
“The thing is that those posts that are available have not been funded yet. The Treasury and human resources of each provincial department must sort out the funding so these intern doctors will get placed, but the meeting around the funding is some time this week,” she said.
Coetzee said there are enough posts, but money is the problem.
Another intern from the Vaal, who graduated in April, said he also heard that there were 118 available funded posts but was frustrated because he did not know when the allocations would be made.
“They must accept all of us in the July cycle, because we’ve been engaging with the department and they have known since at least April that all of us have graduated. We’re ready to go to work as soon as possible,” he said.
He added that he was also concerned that if he was placed in a different province, he would not have time to adequately prepare for the move or find accommodation.
Health Department spokesperson Popo Maja was unable to provide comment by time of publication, however the department’s workforce management director Victor Khanyile said on eNCA on Sunday morning that the 288 medical interns would be in the workforce by July 1.
Khanyile added that the department was finalising appointments and that there would be a meeting today with provincial heads of departments to discuss the 213 unfunded posts.
The intern doctors added that they were ready to start working at the hospitals, especially as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to rage and hospitals are experiencing staff shortages.
“Now that we’re going to the third wave, we would like to help and participate to serve the government because we know that hospitals are short staffed,” the intern said.
The Star