National doctor strike imminent
Motsoaledi released the information on Wednesday amid growing reports that the doctor strike action was widespread in KwaZulu-Natal and rapidly spreading to all corners of the country with many doctors only attending to emergency cases as they waited for details of government’s final offer.
Doctors are demanding a 50% increase while Motsoaledi’s offer included increases of up to 60% depending on individual salary packages which could differ massively. However, doctors warned that government’s latest offer merely lumped extras such as overtime, pension and scarce skills allowances into the package, creating the impression that they were offering much bigger increases.
Dr Rinesh Chetty, a doctor at Durban’s King Edward Hospital said they were not doing it for the money, but ‘for the betterment of the health system’.
‘We want doctors who have left to come back and improve matters for our patients, if that means we have to do something considered illegal (strike), then so be it,’ said Chetty.
Dr Lesego Pooe of the United Doctors Forum (UDF) rejected Motsoaledi’s offer and said the minister’s public offer was unfortunate and ‘deliberately undermining the integrity, openness and honesty that underpins negotiations of such magnitude and nature’.
‘The government saw it fit to ‘negotiate through the media’ when the offer had not been tabled, or the principals given an opportunity to interrogate the proposal. We view such acts as an attempt to discredit the legitimate course of action by doctors; to demonize our strike action, thus making the public lose sympathy,’ he said.
He said the UDF’s aim was ‘to plan a countrywide, well coordinated, and sustainable mass actions which will continue until our demands are met’.
Doctors in other parts of the country have indicated that they would also be joining the strike, however nothing has been confirmed.
Western Cape doctors met at Groote Schuur Hospital on Thursday, but have decided to give all doctors an opportunity to study the proposed government figures over the weekend and make a final decision on Monday afternoon.
At the meeting an informal show of hands indicated that there was widespread support for a strike.
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