Staff at Fort England Hospital in Grahamstown have been picketing outside the hospital daily for the past week, over money they say the provincial health department owes them.
Staff at Fort England Hospital in Grahamstown have been picketing outside the hospital daily for the past week, over money they say the provincial health department owes them.
With employees taking turns to protest from 10am, the hospital has been operating on a skeleton staff.
"We have been picketing since last week," Thando Mtshalala, Nehawu chairperson at the Fort England branch, told Grocott's Mail on Wednesday 29 May.
He said staff there were still waiting for accruals and benefits they should have been paid.
He said the department had reneged on its promise to process Performance Management and Development System (PMDS) bonuses and overtime payments.
Mtshalala said that in this way, the department was provoking its employees.
"We have not been paid PMDS [bonuses]from 2010 up until now," Mtshalala said.
"We don't know what the problem is. There are people from other institutions who have been paid. This is really frustrating for us."
"We are waiting for people from the department to come and address us. [At first] they said there was R169 million available to pay everyone. Now all of a sudden the said the money is finished and we never got paid."
Mtshalala said as an interim solution, the union had suggested to the hospital CEO that the department use Fort England's surplus budget to pay the staff.
He said they expected to hear what the department said later that day.
Read about the outcome of the meeting between the staff and the health department in Friday's print edition.
