The union's leadership made the calls earlier this week. “BONU strongly believes that the Ministry harbours a discriminatory and negative attitude towards nurses and midwives. This perception is substantiated by the fact that the majority of the Ministry’s top management positions are dominated by a particular cadre, to the detriment of the nurses and midwives who constitute the bulk of the Ministry’s workforce. Any objective assessment of this perceived bias would conclude that it is “highly likely,” BONU president, Peter Baleseng said. Furthermore, he said nurses and midwives operate under constant threat of litigation, which results in the government losing significant amounts of money. He said consequently nurses have no choice but to protect themselves through the courts of law, as no other mechanisms are made available to them.
According, to the press release, despite repeated efforts to seek relief on these matters, their pleas consistently hit a brick wall. The BONU leadership said this appears to be a deliberate attempt to undermine nurses and midwives, as this has seemingly become an accepted norm within the Ministry. BONU said the situation has deteriorated further under the management of PS Professor Nkomazana and Dr. Ramotsababa. “Nurses are being sidelined with impunity. This is exemplified by the prolonged vacancy in the position of Director of Nursing and Midwifery Services ( DNMS) a critical role for the Nursing Profession,” he pointed out. They further pointed out that again nurses and midwives have had to seek relief from the courts of law, even on matters that could be resolved internally.
Moreover, Baleseng said the Ministry’s leadership has consistently been unresponsive whether by design or sheer lack of interest in this noble profession. It continued; “nurses and midwives are frequently subjected to disciplinary actions for issues and omissions beyond their scope of practice and worse of them all some issues are caused by lack of resources which are the responsibility of the government. Baleseng said it is unacceptable that a few individuals who fail to perform their duties and demonstrate clear incompetence benefit from the continued targeting of nurses and midwives.
“The incident at Broadhurst 3 Clinic, where nurses and midwives are facing disciplinary action for failing to assist patients due to a power outage, is both shocking, appalling and must be condemned without fear or favour,” he said. They also blamed the PS and the Secretary for Primary Health Care for failure to have backup generators in the event there are power cuts while in cases where they are generators, they do fail to ensure that they are working or repairing them. The BONU leadership also gave Ministry Health to ensure that all issues are addressed or failure they would take another action to escalate the matter. Efforts to get a comment from the Ministry of Health were not successful.
