Issued by: SA Communication Service
President Nelson Mandela welcomes the agreement reached between striking nurses in the Gauteng Province and the Provincial Department. The President hopes that this agreement will see the nurses returning to their places of work on Monday, so that they can fulfill their obligations to patients and to society as a whole.
As he indicated earlier, President Nelson Mandela fully appreciates the terrible conditions under which this sector of public employees, and others, have to work. The Government of National Unity is committed to improving these conditions, which are a result of decades of apartheid neglect.
President Nelson Mandela is confident that the continuing negotiations in the central bargaining chamber, the national consultative and other forums will resolve these problems and help facilitate the nation's programme to afford qualitative health care to all citizens.
It is therefore unacceptable, that when such negotiations are starting to make progress, groupings within the profession, which had in the past spurned any form of protest to improve nurses' conditions, should attempt to undermine these negotiations and the very proess f tranformation itself, through strike action. And it is tragic that these goupings should pursue thei agenda with such callous disregard for the conditions of patients.
The President hopes that the agreement reached will create conditions for rational discussion to continue; and that such incidents will not recur.
9 September 1995
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