JOHANNESBURG

Industrial action since 1 June by the South African public sector workforce, who are demanding a pay hike, is taking its toll on the country's health services.

The strike, termed as the biggest since the demise of apartheid by its organisers the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), a labour federation, has crippled schools, hospitals and public transport.

Workers providing essential services are barred from protesting but few nurses have turned up for work at public hospitals and clinics since the beginning of the strike.

Doctors, who are not participating in the action in many cities, have been forced to stay at home for fear of intimidation and the possibility of violence. President Thabo Mbeki has condemned the intimidation.

Several hundred health personnel have been dismissed for participating in the strike, some of them reportedly for intimidating their colleagues. There have been some casualties: this week a pregnant woman lost her child when no one was available to operate on her at a public hospital in the east coast city of Durban.

The government deployed military personnel to ensure patients had access to care on 13 June, when the country's entire workforce joined the public-sector workers, but patients fearing intimidation chose to stay away.

"How can they say that they will deploy military and volunteers to handle medical care? Do those people even know where we store Panado [popular brand of paracetamol] or the syringes?" asked a health worker who did not want to be named.

She pointed out that members of parliament had received a 50 percent salary increase, so why could workers not get a 12 percent pay hike? The government has offered a 7.25 percent raise, which has been rejected by the labour federation.

Low salaries

A senior nurse, who chose to remain anonymous, said it was impossible to make ends meet. "How do they expect me to take home R8,000 (about US$1,100) and I have bills to pay, and yet they will still tax the money?" She confirmed that only five nurses were on duty in their hospital's 33 operating theatres.
Jack Bloom, a spokesman for the opposition Democratic Alliance party in Gauteng Province, the country's industrial hub, noted that the casualty department of Baragwanath Hospital, one of the biggest referral facilities in the region, usually admitted up to 500 emergencies every day but only 100 were admitted on 13 June.

"It is worrying as to where else they are going to get necessary treatment," he commented. Only about a 1,000 patients visited the hospital compared to an average of 2,500 on a normal day.

COSATU is an ally of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), but has often locked horns with government, accusing it of not advocating pro-poor policies.

Many analysts, including ANC members, fear that the strike action is a show of strength ahead of the party's internal elections to be held later this year, when the ANC is expected to choose Mbeki's successor.

Jacob Zuma, the country's former deputy president, who was fired in 2005 after being implicated in a high-profile fraud trial related to South Africa's arms procurement programme but has the support of some COSATU leaders, is one of the candidates.