An outsourced company has been failing careworkers in Gauteng.
After protesting for three months against their employment being outsourced by the Gauteng Department of Health, community health care workers including those in Alexandra said they have given up the fight.
They eventually decided to sign up with the outsourced company, Smart Purse, because they were locked out and not allowed to work.
In a country that has the biggest divide between public and private healthcare, community careworkers are not recognized as employees and do not enjoy labour rights and the protection of SA’s labour laws.
In a gloomy room in a cinder block RDP house so cramped there is barely enough space to move his wheelchair, Masixole Sosikela, 29, looks as if he is part of the furniture.
Sosikela lost the use of his legs in a car accident three years ago and has since been confined to the small house he shares with his mother and young brother. With his mother at work and his brother at school, he spends his days alone in the house in BM Section, Greenpoint, Khayelitsha. His only daytime visitor is home community health worker, Nikezwa Bara, who comes to see him three times a week. She spends about an hour with him, washing and dressing his bedsores, emptying his catheter and changing his linen. Bara also prepares him something to eat in the kitchen and wheels him outside to enjoy a bit of sunshine.
Bara is one of 106 community health workers (CHWs) in Khayelitsha who offer essential health and social services to over 1,000 patients who are bed-ridden or chronically or terminally ill. For these patients, the CHWs are a lifeline of care and company.
Tyres and rubbish were burnt on Swartklip Road by residents of Los Angeles informal settlement near Driftsands recently as they were demanding that electricity be supplied to their area.
Los Angeles resident, Nosethu Balintulo, said the provision of electricity had been promised many times by City officials, but nothing has been delivered.
Despite a mobile police station in the area, residents believe that crime continues unabated.
While a new mobile police station in Site C has been helpful for people wanting to verify documents and obtain affidavits, residents say it does nothing to prevent crime.
The mobile station was placed at the Site C shopping plaza on 27 May this year and opened by national deputy minister of police, Maggie Sotyu, who claimed that it would be open seven days a week, 24 hours a day, in order to strengthen the fight against crime.
Alexandra, one of the oldest townships in the country, is synonymous with producing high profile individuals who have raised the country’s flag high in various sectors. In music, it has produced Hugh Masekela and Caiphus Semenya. In politics there is Paul Mashatile and Kgalema Motlanthe while in sports the list is endless. The names of Shoes Moshoeu, Brian Baloyi, Shakes Kungoane and Maimane Alfred Phiri quickly come to mind as those who have excelled on the international sporting stage.
For the month of September, Gugs grooved to the sounds of great international and local jazz musicians every Sunday as part of the Jazz Heritage Festival hosted by the increasingly popular Jazz in the Native Yards initiative.
Victims of the devastating New Year’s Day fire in Khayelitsha BM Section in 2013, who have been living without electricity for three years, are to finally receive power this month, the City has announced.
The fire which tore through the informal settlement, resulted in three deaths and the destruction of 800 homes, with 331 homes allowed to be temporarily rebuilt on land next to the OR Tambo Hall on Mew Way, a short distance from BM Section.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions, COSATU, has accused food companies of exploiting the poor by increasing bread prices at a time when the cost of wheat has come down.
Running the gauntlet to school is no longer a danger for some children in gang-infested Mitchells Plain thanks to an innovative ‘walking bus’ initiative implemented by the Western Cape Community Safety MEC Dan Plato earlier this year.
The initiative, which sees parents and grandparents volunteering to accompany groups of children to and from school, was introduced in Delft in May, and expanded to include the Mitchells Plain areas of Lentegeur and Beacon Valley in June.
A Maths and Science school in Delft has received a major donation from Samsung.
A high school in gang-ridden Delft hosted 30 Korean volunteers for a week, who, as part of a team from electronics giant Samsung, taught learners smartphone repair skills and how to establish an online shopping portal.
ANC members and supporters in Buffalo City pleaded with former president Kgalema Motlanthe to remove corrupt ward councillors and approach the national office to disband their party’s regional and provincial leadership.
Motlanthe and other ANC leaders were in East London this week to review legislation passed by the government. The meeting took place at the East London Christian Centre. Hundreds of people participated.
Workers at Robertson Winery are on strike calling on the winery to pay them R8,500 a month.
The workers, who protested outside the winery say they are currently earning between R2,900 and R3,500 a month before deductions, according to Karel Swartz, deputy general secretary of the Commercial, Stevedoring and Allied Workers’ Union (CSAAWU).
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