{"id":166558,"date":"2020-09-23T18:34:58","date_gmt":"2020-09-23T16:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/gauteng-community-health-workers-still-waiting-full-pay\/"},"modified":"2020-09-23T18:34:58","modified_gmt":"2020-09-23T16:34:58","slug":"gauteng-community-health-workers-still-waiting-for-full-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/gauteng-community-health-workers-still-waiting-for-full-pay\/","title":{"rendered":"Gauteng community health workers still waiting for full pay"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Suspended Gauteng MEC Bandile Masuku committed in June to making thousands of community health workers permanent employees with higher salaries. Photo courtesy of Spotlight NSP<\/a><\/p>\n

About 40 Community Healthcare Workers (CHWs) in Gauteng say they have not been paid their full salaries by the Gauteng Health Department for the last two months.<\/p>\n

Gauteng Health MEC, Bandile Masuku, announced<\/a> in June that about 8,500 community health workers would be made permanent employees of the government and their stipends would increase from R3,500 to R8,500 a month.<\/p>\n

But according to a statement released by Right2Know (R2K) on Tuesday, some community health workers are still receiving R3,500. Some workers had not received any money at all for the past two months, said R2K.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the workers questioned their regional officials, they were told that it\u2019s a system failure. Payment will be made once the capturing of their particulars on the system is finalised,\u201d R2K said.<\/p>\n

R2K said the workers were \u201cvery worried and stressed\u201d.<\/p>\n

One worker, who asked to remain anonymous, said she had worked as a community health worker since 2007 when she earned R800 at a non-governmental organisation. She currently works at a clinic in Kagiso, in the West Rand, as an educator. She teaches people who visit the clinic how to use condoms and answers some of their health-related questions before sending them inside the clinic.<\/p>\n

On 1 July, she said, she had signed a contract that would make her a permanent employee of the government, earning R7,600 after deductions.<\/p>\n

But since then, she has only received her stipend of R3,500, though she has been going to work every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has affected me very badly because I was promised this money and I never got it. I had to borrow money from my family members to pay for my rent and my child\u2019s school fees,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Some of the workers who have not received their full salaries are members of the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU).<\/p>\n

One of NEHAWU\u2019s demands in the most recent nationwide protest<\/a> was for the government to employ CHWs permanently and integrate them into the public service.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore the Covid-19 pandemic, these workers\u2019 professions were undermined and even now, they are still being undermined, even though we can see the crucial role that they play,\u201d said Bongani ka Mthembu, R2K Gauteng Coordinator.<\/p>\n

He said the workers were providing important healthcare services to people in townships.<\/p>\n

The Gauteng health department had not responded to GroundUp\u2019s queries by the time of publication. The response will be added when it is received.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u00a9 2020 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suspended Gauteng MEC Bandile Masuku committed in June to making thousands of community health workers permanent employees with higher salaries. Photo courtesy of Spotlight NSP About 40 Community Healthcare Workers (CHWs) in Gauteng say they have not been paid their full salaries by the Gauteng Health Department for the last two months. Gauteng Health MEC, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":166559,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-166558","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/gauteng-community-health-workers-still-waiting-for-full-pay.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}