BL Premium reports that the Gauteng Department of Health (DOH) has assured healthcare professionals that it is not scrapping overtime payments for doctors in their entirety but simply reviewing its policy to ensure it sticks within its budget.
Acting head of department Lesiba Malotana wrote to public health facility CEOs and senior managers on 15 February announcing the withdrawal of their authority to approve commuted overtime payments from 1 April, pending a policy review. All overtime payments will henceforth have to be signed off by head office. Commuted overtime is a requirement of the job designed to ensure hospitals can operate round the clock. The hours can be considerable, and constitute up to a third of many doctors’ salaries, according to SA Medical Association’s Mark Human. The DOH’s move was intended to bring its annual expenditure on commuted overtime back within its allocated budget of about R2.2bn, said spokesperson Motalatale Modiba. He was unable to specify the extent of the overspending but said it ran to “millions” and had been flagged by the auditor-general as an area of concern. The Health and Allied Workers Indaba Trade Union (Haitu) issued a statement on Friday condemning the department’s “decision to cancel overtime” for doctors, saying it would put patients’ lives at risk. Solidarity’s network co-ordinator for doctors, Pierru Marx, said the move would add a new burden to a system “known for administration nightmares” and was likely to prove frustrating for doctors, who were contracted to work commuted overtime.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tamar Kahn at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
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