Download PDFIn the North West province the Department of Health has been deducting money from Community Healthcare Workers’ (CHWs) stipend at the end of the months of April and May 2021 for reasons unknown to them. The most affected are CHWs in the district of Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District Municipality (in the Vryburg area). At our facility, a clinic in Lekwa-Teemane sub-district municipality, most CHWs’ stipends have had deductions by the Department without any justification.
There is even one of our clinic’s CHWs who did not get her stipend at all for the two months of April and May.
This matter of the Department not paying our colleagues in time started since from April 2018, when there was a CHW in our clinic who did not get her stipend for six months.
As a matter of fact, many of our CHW comrades did not get paid until we have made a follow up by asking the office of the Premier in North West province to intervene.
According to the feedback from the office of the Premier, the Department of Health said all CHWs have been paid and that the only CHWs who are experiencing challenges with their stipends are Redcross CHWs. Yet at our facilities in Lekwa-Teemane sub-district we don’t have Redcross CHWs and many have been experiencing these problems.
We are still waiting for answers and clarity about our why our stipends have been cut up until today, we still have not got any clarity from our management.
This article was submitted on 4 June 2021 and first published in the Forum News May-June 2021 edition. You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Karibu! Online (www.Karibu.org.za), and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
