Cutting health budget will kill South Africans, warns nursing union
Healthcare workers are pleading with Finance Minister Tito Mboweni not to cut the health budget.
Ahead of Mboweni’s budget speech on Wednesday, unions affiliated to trade union federation Saftu have embarked on a stay-away.
Speaking at a picket outside the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, the Young Nurses Indaba’s Fikile Dikolomela-Leungene said the African National Congress (ANC) has failed to prioritise healthcare workers
“Twenty-four years into democracy the ruling party has done nothing but massacre the Health Department. Look at the PPE corruption saga, they are even taking a snail pace in dealing with those crimes. Instead they see that they need to cut the health budget. It’s really unfair.
“If the finance minister is going to cut the health budget, he is killing South Africans. There are no systems in place that the government has put to strengthen these facilities. We already don’t have resources, our wards are full and our mother and child units are erupting with mothers and babies. So when you cut, what must nurses and doctors do?”
Among the demands by public servants is the salary increase agreed upon by government in 2018.
Dikolomela-Leungene says public servants also need tax relief, quality personal protective equipment and a halt to all retrenchments.
