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GroundUp reports that more than 100 security guards and cleaners affiliated to the SA Cleaners, Security and Allied Workers’ Union (SACSAWU) and the National Union of Public Service and Allied Workers (NUPSAW) marched from the Johannesburg Library Gardens to the Gauteng Department of Health in Marshalltown on Wednesday.
They were demanding that the department directly employ all security guards and cleaners working at Gauteng hospitals. A memorandum of demands was read out by Sello Molaudzi, NUPSAW provincial secretary. The workers claimed they were exploited and not treated fairly by private companies. Mziyanda Ndevu, NUPSAW chairperson at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, said this was not the first time the group had delivered a memorandum demanding that security guards and cleaners at hospitals be directly employed by the department. “We started by engaging the head of the department in 2020, but we have not received a response,” he indicated. A shop steward from Lillian Ngoyi Community Health Centre in Diepkloof, Soweto, commented: “We work in difficult conditions there. There is no shelter for us at the gates so we get rained on and we get cold. We get exploited and we earn peanuts in return.” A security guard complained that he did not get paid on time and this forced him to borrow money. The unions want the department to stop all advertising for security and cleaning posts until insourcing is finalised. They also want cleaners working at the province’s nursing colleges and forensic pathology services to be insourced. They furthermore want all security guards dismissed at Edenvale Hospital and Sizwe Tropical Diseases Hospital to be reinstated immediately.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Masego Mafata at GroundUp
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