GroundUp reports that thousands of community health workers, supported by National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) members, marched in eight provinces on Thursday, demanding to be employed permanently by the health department.  

Khaya Xaba said the union had delivered memos in eight provinces, except in Gauteng.  “These workers have been patient enough with the government and we feel that it is about time the government takes them seriously,” Xaba noted.   All provincial offices were given seven days to respond to the workers’ demands.  Apparently, the planned action in Gauteng was called off at the eleventh hour following negotiations with the provincial health department to insource some workers.  Marchers were angered when the head of the health ministry in the Western Cape, Dr Douglas Newman-Valentine, came out to inform the group that MEC Nomafrench Mbombo was not available to receive their memorandum. Dr Newman-Valentine, however, promised that the department would respond within seven days.  In Durban, over 200 Nehawu members were joined by the SA Communist Party (SACP) outside the KwaZulu-Natal offices of the health department and eThekwini District in Westridge.  In Port Elizabeth, about 120 workers gathered outside the Eastern Cape Department of Health district office to hand a memorandum to Health MEC Sindiswa Gomba.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Vincent Lali, Nokulunga Majola and Joseph Chirume at GroundUp
• Read too, Community health workers say they have to meet their supervisors under a tree in Khayelitsha, at GroundUp

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