GroundUp reports that the Department of Health (DOH) has averted a standoff with nurses in the public sector with a last-minute agreement to pay nurses a temporary allowance to buy uniforms.

Nurses threatened to work in their own clothes if the department failed to provide them either with uniforms or with an allowance by 1 October. This plan was put on hold pending negotiations between unions and the DOH. Since 2005, nurses received an annual allowance to buy their uniforms. But this ended on 31 March this year after a new agreement was signed by the Public Health and Social Development Sectoral Bargaining Council. Under the new agreement, nurses would be provided with uniforms and, as a result, nurses did not get the usual allowance in April this year. Instead, they were supposed to be provided with uniforms by 1 October 2023. At a last-minute meeting in September, the DOH told unions that it would be unable to meet the 1 October deadline. It proposed to put on hold the supply of uniforms until 2024. But a new agreement was able to be concluded and signed on 4 October. It resolved that a temporary uniform allowance of R3,153 be paid to all qualifying nurses by 30 November 2023. The DOH also agreed to provide nurses with uniforms by 1 September 2024.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Marecia Damons at GroundUp

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