Following shortages of linen supply due to breakdowns of the in-house laundry machines in Middelburg hospital, Mpumalanga Department of Health has taken essential steps to mitigate the disruption of linen services at hospital. It is important to note that the laundry machines at Middelburg hospital are aging and despite multiple repairs, the machines continue to fail, necessitating that some machines need complete replacement. In response to this, the department fixed some of the machines to continue to do laundry washing local. Whereas, some linen is washed at the neighbouring hospitals. Whilst the procurement of new laundry machines is underway, the department has managed to restore services of the old Laundry machines in the hospital.
The breakdown of the laundry machines affected the normal provision of hospital services; hence a team of infrastructure technicians were working around the clock to address the challenges affecting laundry services.
Unfortunately, in the midst of addressing these challenges, some of the hospital staff embarked in an unprotected strike with demand that management should vacate the hospital. The department engaged with those staff members and attended to some of their demands. However nineteen (19) of the employees persisted on embarking on an illegal action by staging a sit-in in the offices of the CEO, Matron and the Corporate Manager demanding their removal.
Their action was disruptive prohibiting the normal functioning of the hospital and impeding management from executing their duties. Despite repeated calls for these workers to return to their stations, they ignored the advice. This left the department with no choice but to effect precautionary suspensions, in the best interests of service delivery, and of the people of Steve Tshwete. The department had no option, but suspend the nineteen (19) officials.
The department condemns any actions that will put the life of fellow workers and patients at risk. The department respect the labour laws of this country, and whatever dissatisfaction the affected employees might have, they must confine themselves within the applicable laws to address their issues.
The department would like to apologise to the communities and our patients who were direct or indirect affected by the disruptions that emanated the developments in the hospital in the past two weeks..
ENDS…
Issued by the Mpumalanga Department of Health.
For any inquiries, please contact Mr. Dumisani Malamule on 013 766 3385 0828879465 and Sharon Nkosi MEC’s spokesperson on 078 317 9518