People’s Health Movement withdraws from Nehawu

The People’s Health Movement South Africa (PHMSA) has withdrawn its membership from the National Health Education and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) health subcommittee.

This comes after the union did not condemn violent protests at hospitals in North West in early May and at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital this week.

“Reports state that patients have been threatened‚ chased from the pharmacy‚ and locked in the basement. Surgical operations have been cancelled [at the Charlotte Maxeke Hospital]‚” said the PHMSA.

The PHMSA emailed the union on April 24 and May 11 expressing concern about protests at hospitals with no response from Nehawu. The PHMSA said it “supports the right of health workers to take strong‚ even disruptive industrial action to improve wages and working conditions”. It said that the Labour Relations Act makes health workers “vulnerable to exploitation by limiting their right to strike”.

But‚ the PHMSA said‚ “We do not … condone violence‚ nor action that endangers the lives of vulnerable people.”

The PHMSA said it did not see “any report of Nehawu distancing itself from these‚ or from the reported earlier actions‚ nor of disciplinary steps being taken”. The health movement decided to distance “itself from any acts by Nehawu that causes harm to the health of vulnerable people and to people’s health more broadly”.

GroundUp previously reported that Nehawu had released a statement on Thursday that indicated it had no control over the protests. “Nehawu in the Gauteng province has been helplessly observing sporadic actions in different facilities of the Gauteng Department of Health … over the past three days‚” the union said. “These actions have led to the intimidation of staff and patients and compromised service delivery.”

Nehawu blamed the provincial health department for its “lacklustre response” to demands handed to it on March 16. The union urged the department to pay the bonuses [to Charlotte Maxeke workers] to avoid further disruption of services.

GroundUp was unable to get further comment from Nehawu specific to the PHMSA statement.

– This article was first published on GroundUp