Gauteng Community Health Workers March to the Health Department

southern africa | community struggles | non-anarchist press Tuesday November 01, 2016 05:23 by Gauteng Community Health Care Forum - Gauteng Community Health Care Forum forumobs at khanyacollege dot org dot za

Community Health Workers led by the Gauteng Community Health Care Forum call on all CHWs, members of the communities, students, workers, and all who are committed to health care for all to join and support a march to the Gauteng Department of Health and the Legislature on the 8 November 2016!!

Gauteng Community Health Care Forum

Together with the communities we serve, we want to voice our deep dissatisfaction about how they are treated by the Government. We feel betrayed by the Government we elected!

The Department is destroying the health of communities in Gauteng! Many of us have served our communities for more than 10 years. For all these years we have put the health of our communities as our main concern. In all this time we appealed to the department to recognise our work, and to give us protection and benefits so that we can serve our communities better.

Now the department wants to dismiss all community health workers. The Department wants to continue paying slave wages, and it refuses to recognise the important work that we do to combat HIV/AIDS, to help those who have no access to health care, and to keep our communities alive. Our communities need many more health workers.

As CHWs we have decided that enough is enough! We resist this mass dismissal and ill-treatment by the Department. We demand that:

• CHWs must be made permanent workers with all the benefits.
• CHWs need recognition and respect from the Department and from the line managers.
• Security and a safe working environment.
• Adequate equipment so that we can perform our work satisfactorily.
• We are overloaded with work and the Department must hire many more health workers.
• Clinics have sufficient medicine to provide decent health care to communities.
• Proper and sufficient education and training.
• To be consulted about work and service delivery.
• An end to the dismissals of CHWs.

We have worked with you for many years, and we ask you to support us in our struggle for recognition and for better health care for our poor communities. Together we can convince the Department to stop this senseless action and to put our communities and their health first.

Date of the march: 8 November 2016, Tuesday
Time: 9am
Meeting place of the march: Mary Fitzgerald Square in Newtown