Strike puts lives at risk

Gauteng Emergency Medical Services ground to a halt in Tshwane yesterday, leaving patients in need of surgery stranded at clinics as paramedics struck for overtime payments and better working conditions.

Prinshof ambulance station, in Pretoria, was inundated with calls from the Laudium Clinic asking that its vehicles take maternity patients to Kalafong Hospital, in Atteridgeville, for scheduled Caesarian sections.

Other areas hit by the strike are Soshanguve, Hammanskraal, Temba, Cullinan and Ekangala.

Fidel Rafedile, a Prinshof paramedic, said he and his colleagues regretted putting lives at risk but the Gauteng department of health had ignored their demands for overtime payment and better working conditions for four years.

He said paramedics worked 192 hours a month instead of the prescribed 160 hours. Unlike their counterparts in other provinces, they were not paid for the extra hours.

Rafedile said many fire and ambulance stations had no water or electricity, and at Waggendrift station 18 personnel shared one toilet.

He said the paramedics were expected to perform "miracles" with ambulances that were inadequately equipped.

"These are not ambulances, they are hearses. What does one do with an ambulance that does not have an oxygen cylinder?"

Rafedile said that in the past two years the Prinshof station had lost 14 advanced life-support technicians to the private sector because of poor working conditions.

He said the strikers told the department of their demands last month and gave it 21 days to respond.

"They ignored us, so we saw no other option but to strike," he said.

Health department spokesman Prince Hamca denied that the department had received a memorandum of demands.

He said the strike endangered lives.

Health department managers met representatives of the striking paramedics yesterday, according to Hamca.

DA MEC for health Jack Bloom said the health department had no back-up plan but "the strike must be resolved as soon as possible" or lives could be lost.