The KwaZulu-Natal health department and the official opposition party are divided over whether the sudden shortage of staff at two regional mortuaries is the result of strike action or a sudden illness.
While both the African National Congress-led department and the Democratic Alliance fail to agree on what has caused the chronic shortage of staff, Health MEC Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo has been performing autopsies to help rid the province of a growing backlog of corpses.
On Tuesday, Dhlomo directed that 17 corpses from the Park Rynie mortuary be sent to the Port Shepstone mortuary because those performing autopsies at Park Rynie had allegedly fallen ill.
According to Dhlomo’s spokesperson, Desmond Motha, the MEC participated in eight autopsies on Tuesday at the Port Shepstone mortuary.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Motha said Dhlomo was again at Port Shepstone performing autopsies when he learned that “six out of the seven staff members” he had been working with on Tuesday at Port Shepstone had fallen ill.
As a result of the illnesses, only one staff member was on hand to do autopsies with the MEC on Wednesday, Motha told ANA.
But Dr Imran Keeka, the Democratic Alliance provincial health spokesperson, said he had been “reliably informed” that on-going strike action at the Park Rynie mortuary had resulted in a backlog of at least 16 post mortems.
“According to our source, staff grievances range from disputes over roster times, days off and leave. They further claim that an unapproved rostering system and overtime policy was imposed on them by Ugu’s district health department, which was not in keeping with provincial health norms,” said Keeka.
“[Dhlomo] must either continuously chase after each and every crisis putting out fires – or he must do the job that the people of KZN pay him for and ensure that his officials do the same.”
Motha denied any knowledge of strike action, saying that the MEC’s priority remained ensuring the corpses were ready for collection by family on Friday.
He said he did not know if there had been some sort of outbreak of flu or other illness that affected mortuary staff at both premises. He said staff members would produce sick certificates upon returning to work.
He said that according to the MEC, this did not constitute a crisis.
– African News Agency (ANA)
