Staff at the cash-strapped St Mary’s Hospital in KZN embarked on a strike after pay talks were deadlocked.
|||Durban - Staff at the cash-strapped St Mary’s Hospital in Mariannhill embarked on a strike on Tuesday after pay talks deadlocked, leading to the effective temporary closure of the historic institution.
The hospital’s paediatric ward was shut down on Tuesday and no patients were being admitted to the male and female surgical wards.
“We only dealt with those patients who were already in the hospital. The ideal is to move as many patients as possible tonight,” St Mary’s marketing and fundraising manager, Julie Vivier, said on Tuesday.
She said patients had been transferred to other facilities such as RK Khan, Don Mackenzie, King Edward VIII and McCord hospitals.
Staff should realise that the hospital could potentially be permanently closed, as a last resort, Vivier said.
The staff union, the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (Denosa), said management had not met its demand that a 6.5 percent salary increase be paid within two weeks.
On October 31 about 300 employees, including nurses, picketed at the gate of the hospital, west of Durban, demanding the increase.
The hospital’s management has offered workers a 3 percent increase.
“There is no new offer. They gave us the same offer that they said they would be able to give us, which was not accepted by the workers,” said Denosa’s provincial organiser, Mandla Shabane. “(They) have not moved from it.”
Last week, Denosa and the hospital management were at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration attempting conciliation but no agreement was reached.
The hospital was then notified by the union that its workers would go for a full-blown strike.
“We have been in negotiations with the hospital until last week. The workers are not prepared to go back to work and we will be present at the hospital’s gates on a strike until our demands are met,” said Shabane.
Vivier said the hospital’s management had told employees during their picket last month that the institution was financially strapped and dependent on a subsidy from the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health.
“Various processes were agreed at the last meeting with the department of health and are still under way. They are to be presented at the next meeting scheduled for December 9, 2013,” said Vivier.
The 200-bed, level-one district hospital is run by a non-profit organisation aligned with the Mariannhill Mission Complex. It is owned by the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood.
It serves more than a million people from disadvantaged, semi-rural communities.
Most of the patients are treated for opportunistic infections such as HIV and Aids, malnutrition, gastroenteritis and tuberculosis.
Shabane said workers were desperate to know the fate of the hospital as they had been informed that it is struggling to remain open.
“The anxiety is there but we cannot (accept) that it is facing potential closure. It is up to the hospital management if they are able to run the hospital,” said Shabane.
Said Vivier: “While this is absolutely the last resort, staff do fear the possibility of closure.”
The hospital had applied for a R135 million government grant last November, for the period April 1, 2013 to March 31, 2016, but the KZN Department of Health had indicated it would provide only R112m, until next year.
This was not enough, the hospital management said.
siyabulela.dzanibe@inl.co.za
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