Nursing is no longer a noble profession because of the pain and suffering that nurses endure, said Rich Sicina, the president of the Allied Workers Indaba Trade Union (Haitu).
Sicina confirmed in a statement sent to Sunday World on Thursday that the union will boycott International Nurses Day on Sunday.
International Nurses Day, which is celebrated every year, is described as a day of pride in the profession.
According to Sicina, the reason they will not be celebrating the day is because nurses in South Africa are undervalued, exploited, and abused.
Sicina said that before nurses start working, they make a pledge that they are later forced to violate every day because the conditions they are exposed to make it impossible to uphold these values.
Austerity measures
“The ANC government has imposed such severe cutbacks that basic items like medicine, sutures, and equipment, as well as the basic maintenance of hospitals, are not being done,” said Sicina.
He went on to say that the cutbacks that were implemented through austerity measures are killing patients, and there is not much that nurses and healthcare workers can do.
“They are also at the mercy of angry patients and the community because of poor service delivery.
“When the Covid-19 pandemic swept across the globe, killing between 80 and 180 000 health workers around the world in the period between January 2020 and May 2021, nurses were forced to work without personal protective equipment [PPE].
“Instead, we heard how officials connected to the government benefitted from tenders to provide PPE, forcing thousands of nurses to risk their lives to treat sick patients without protective clothing,” Sicina said.
There’s no reason to celebrate
He stated that nursing has become a painful profession.
“The pain of sacrificing your time and even your life in exchange for insults and abuse from the community and the insulting treatment from an employer, who does not even have the decency to honour wage agreements.”
Haitu has no reason to celebrate International Nurses Day because of the injustices that are inflicted upon the profession.
“Nurses are unable to afford decent housing or to send their children to decent schools because the salaries they earn are so low, they cannot improve their own living conditions.
“We cannot, in conscience, pretend that all is well in the profession when it is not.
“We will be boycotting International Nurses Day to highlight the challenges faced by nurses, in the hope that this will result in positive changes going forward.”
