The Young Nurses Indaba Trade Union (YNITU) welcomes the decision by the Gauteng Department of Health MEC, Dr Gwen Ramokgopa, to admit 700 prospective student nurses to the Province’s nursing colleges.

This follows a militant radical uprising by the Future Nursing Student's Campaign to #OpenNursingColleges, fully supported by the YNITU leadership and EFF Student Command.

YNITU wishes to emphasise that there are still 320 outstanding prospective applicants who successfully completed all assessment stages of selection and should be part of the programme. We urge the Gauteng Department of Health (GDoH) to quit playing games and train 1020 students as initially planned. No student should be excluded due to poor management of funds by the GDoH.

The Gauteng nursing colleges have adequate infrastructures and qualified and competent academic staff who are ready to commence training as planned for ALL 1020 students immediately. The GDoH must follow its due procurement policies and ensure students have study material and stop using the funding model as a way to loot and unduly benefit their own at the expense of nursing training and citizens of South Africa.

YNITU has also noted with concern the failure of MEC Gwen Ramokgopa to publicly avail herself to discuss a crisis in the nursing fraternity yet is quick to attend to cases which crucify nurses. It is also clear from the MEC's politically correct utterances that "there is no way that nurses cannot be trained or prioritised", proves that the MEC is in the dark on how her department went as far discarding thousands of fully trained Nurses after their community service.

YNITU is disgusted the by silence and lack of involvement of all sweetheart unions organizing nurses who later plagiarized the Nurses Revolutionary interventions as their own. We categorically wish to state that nurses of SA have no business subscribing to unions that continue to compromise them whilst sleeping with the employer and claiming victories of battles they are terrified to fight.

The continuous relentless struggle of the SA nurses who suffers appalling working conditions, nurses who are made scapegoats of the ailing health system and punch bags of the Minister of Health with no insight must reach a screeching halt.

Open all Nursing Colleges and University Nursing faculties for the benefit of all healthcare users we serve!
 

Issued by by Young Nurses Indaba Trade Union