GroundUp reports that about 500 nurses and nursing assistants at six hospitals and clinics under the Raymond Mhlaba Local Municipality in the Eastern Cape protested on Monday, demanding to be paid a R1,200 rural allowance.

The protest saw many sick patients stranded at the facilities as nurses downed tools. According to the nurses, the allowance is part of an agreement made between unions and the provincial health department at a 2019 bargaining council. The allowance was paid to all nurses working in rural areas until it was stopped in 2007. But the provincial department said that only 28 nurses who were named and won in an arbitration matter against the state were due to benefit from the allowance. Yonela Dekeda, provincial health department spokesperson, said that the rural allowance was being paid in accordance with a collective agreement negotiated and signed by the employer and trade unions and it listed the professionals working in the rural areas who should qualify for the allowance in question. She said that the nurses currently protesting were in work categories lower than the professional nurses. “From the employer’s perspective, these categories are not listed as part of the professional nurses that are to benefit from the rural allowance agreement,” Dekeda asserted. She denied that the head of the provincial health department, Dr Rolene Wagner, had walked out of the meeting with nursing representatives last Friday. A response from the National Department of Health, advising the provincial department that the matter was receiving urgent attention, had apparently been shared there. The protest was due to continue on Tuesday morning.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Mkhuseli Sizani at GroundUp

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