Employment

Application period: Friday 20th February - Friday 27th February (applications close 12:00pm)
Short listing Session: Thursday 5th March
Short listed candidates to be informed: Thursday 12th March
Interview dates: Monday 16th/Tuesday 17th/Wednesday 18th March
Unsuccessful Applicants Informed: Wednesday 25th March
Anticipated Start date: 1st April or as soon as possible thereafter

Recruitment and Selection of required personnel is the first step to a superb workforce. Retention is step two and critical for long-term success of your organisation for effective provision of healthcare service delivery.

The Africa Regional Sexuality Resource Centre (ARSRC) in collaboration with Health Systems Trust, South Africa, is pleased to announce the second edition of its annual Sexuality Institute and to invite suitably qualified professionals to apply.

The commuted overtime system is so out of touch with reality that it cannot be implemented without widespread fraud.

We have a vacancy for the following position in our Research Programme for the Regional STI Project

The nursing shortage in Cape Town and surrounding areas is so bad that many managers won't give their staff time off to do advanced training courses. The advanced midwifery course at the university can accommodate 10 nurses, Clow said, but this year has four students. The child-nursing course, which can accommodate 15-20 nurses, has only nine. The Independent in London reported yesterday that Britain is continuing to loot the poorest nations of the world of their skilled medical staff to shore up the National Health Service (NHS) in defiance of a 2001 government ban on the practice. Figures from the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) released yesterday show that 3 472 nurses from countries on the banned list were registered in the UK last year - almost a third more than the 2 638 who were recruited from developing countries two years ago, when the ban came into force. Most of the banned nurses are from Africa, where recruitment was 41% higher last year than in 2000/01. The biggest source is South Africa. The country supplied 1 480 nurses to Britain in 2002 and this year to date and a total of 6 739 over the past five years. NHS trusts are still critically short of the nurses they need to hit government targets to treat more patients and cut waiting lists. Although the NHS has recruited 37 000 more nurses since 1997, there are still shortages. Overseas recruitment is a way to fill the gap and NHS trusts are using private recruitment agencies to get round the ban. (Source: Jo-Anne Smetherham and Jeremy Laurence: The Cape Times, 13 May 2003 )

Have you seen an ambulance being used to transport potatoes, or a government car parked at a shopping mall during office hours? Now you can make sure your tax payments are not being used for the wrong reasons by reporting these activities to the Health Department's fraud and corruption hotline. In a bid to root out corruption, the department is trying to turn its employees and the public into whistleblowers. Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang launched the department's health fraud prevention plan on Monday. The department has been fraught with corruption in the form of mismanagement, malpractice and nepotism. We will not hesitate to act against anyone who is found guilty of fraud or corruption, Tshabalala-Msimang said. Fraud should be reported anonymously through the hotline on 0800-20-14-14. (Source: Jillian Green, The Star, May 13, 2003)

SA Medical Association chairman Kgosi Letlape has criticised Western Cape's health department for attempting to cut doctors' overtime pay, saying that a reduction would encourage them to leave the public health system and compromise patient care. The department has been embroiled in growing controversy with doctors over the past week. In addition to trying to reduce overtime pay, which accounts for about 30% of doctors' pay, the department has put a stop to non emergency heart surgery at Cape Town's Groote Schuur Hospital and Red Cross Children's Hospital until the end of the financial year. It has also banned medical personnel from speaking to the media. Letlape, met staff of the province's three tertiary hospitals and associated psychiatric facilities, said that the province had no right to tamper with a national agreement between the association and the national health department governing doctors' conditions of employment. The association would raise its concerns with the provincial government and the central government, he said. Letlape said there were other ways spending could be cut, such as cutting back on the administrative cost of having a national health minister and nine MECs. For doctors in Western Cape, the overtime pay issue is the culmination of a number of events affecting their earnings and working conditions. Promotions in the public health-care system have been frozen for the past 18 months, and a moratorium on filling vacant posts means that many doctors are working longer hours. (Source: Business Day 01 October 2002)

The purpose of this document is to arrive at a better understanding of the social and economic position, look at the scope for increasing the wages, a motivation for a minimum wage and at what level it should be set. It also includes recommendations in respect of conditions of employment of farm workers in South Africa.