Good day Mr Julius Malema and Mr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi. I hope this finds you well.

I wanted to bring it to your attention that there are a lot of doctors who are sitting at home with qualifications, but no jobs because the Gauteng Department of Health has said they don't have any money and we were then told to sit at home until further notice.

There were rumours going around in March that posts had been frozen as the GDoH was in dire straits, due to many issues, the Life Esidimeni debarcal being one of them. An artical was published in the Citizen last month stating that a moratorium had been taken out on the hiring of staff in the previous financial year. It stated that new appointments can only be made in April after the new budget had been released. Shockingly posts are still frozen.

No one has given us any formal communication about this or any indication as to when the posts may be unfrozen.

Now some doctors in some hospitals haven't been paid overtime as well. They were just told the department doesn't have any money and this will go on until further notice. In Bheki Mlangeni Hospital in Soweto they were apparently told that they will only get paid overtime from September 2018. In the meantime they are still expected to work overtime even though they are not being paid for it. Apparently the overtime won't be backdated so they are basically working overtime for 'free' until then.

What is to happen now? Doctors also have bills to pay. We have families who are looking for support from us. For some of us our University studies were funded by the department. We are then expected to work in the Gauteng province for the amount of years that we were funded, but how is this to happen when we are sitting at home? Its also unfair for us to be held ransom to the contract when we can't be given jobs.

On the flip side of things many of us have been told to search for jobs in other provinces. Is it fair for us to just uproot our lives, leave our families and commitments and move to another province? Its really unfair.

In the midst of all of this the healthcare system suffers and it's the patients that will suffer even more.

Please may you assist us in getting this public and hopefully get a formal communication from the GDoH as well as when we can expect the posts to be unfrozen. The only response we get from personnel from the GDoH is that we should wait till further notice.

Regards,
Disgruntled Doctors