The president of the Swaziland Democratic Nurses Union (SWADNU) Welcome Mdluli threw a challenge to SWADNU members to stand up and defend their workplace and human rights against the exploitative Tinkhundla government.
The president was speaking during a gathering of the nurses union ,in the southern town of eNhlangano on the 12th May 2022, to mark the International Nurses Day 2022 (#IND2022). In his impassionate address he first addressed the lack of unity within SWADNU and alerted attendees of the #IND2022 gathering that the union cannot afford to go to court every other day ,saying "We are brothers and sisters we cannot afford to fight each other forever ".
The president then threw the gauntlet to the nurses imploring them to act in the face of their conditions of employment slipping away from right under their hands. He cited the shortage of medicine, shortage of staff, equipment non functionality as some of the indicators that the state of the health system was n shambles. He asked "For how long are we going to gather in this manner and keep on lamenting, for how long are we going to suffer as nurses?
President Mdluli informed the gathering that the leadership of SWADNU have engaged the government on several occasions to try to resolve some of the issues that nurses experience everyday in the facilities. The most recent of such an encounter was on the issue of nurses working on fixed term contracts. In this instance as with others the leadership of SWADNU engaged with the top leadership of the ministry of health amongst them the Minister and Principal Secretary. In this particular engagement both the Minister and the PS were agreeable to renewing the contracts of nurses whose fixed term contracts had ended. However after the meeting the government decided renege not to implement the engagement agreement ,in the process making a mockery out of the leadership of SWADNU and by extension to the members of SWADNU.
The president asked the question as to how long are SWADNU members going to remain silent when things are not going right ,when facilities are being closed (because of lack of personnel) and when not even facilities have run out of baby pain syrup, medicine that nurses would never imagine that it would run out.
The President throughout his speech repeated his rhetorical question as to , how long they will keep quiet?
The last issue the president raised was the issue pertaining to the security of nurses in health facilities around the which he said continued to deteriorate while government appeared to be uninterested to correct the situation. He cited examples of the recent security breach that took place in Piggs Peak where a group of people engaged in a violent fight stabbing one another inside the Piggs Peak hospital in the presence of health workers . He also cited a recent incident in Zombodze (Emuva) where recently the facility was also attacked.
The president ended his address by re expressing his commitment to unity within SWADNU and urging members to ,going forward , be ready to fight for their workplace and trade union rights because otherwise they will not get anything under the Tinkhundla system, which he described as a system that functions to serve one person their family only.
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