Oversight visit finds problems at college
Staffing problems at the Mpumalanga Nursing College should be fixed by next month, says Health department.
KABOKWENI – There are not enough lecturers at the Mpumalanga Nursing College to deal with the ever-increasing student intake numbers. This is just one of the challenges faced by the college at Themba Hospital.
It was revealed by the provincial health department during a site visit by the legislature’s oversight committee to the college on Tuesday.
The shortage of not only teachers, but support staff too, is a result of the slow hiring by the department. “We have found ourselves in a position where we cannot accommodate all the students,” said the college’s principal, Julia Maunye.
In order to meet all the teaching requirements, the college has resorted to asking the nurses at Themba to step in as preceptors.
Also, the absence of a psychiatric ward means that students are taken to a hospital in KwaZulu-Natal to do their psychiatric nursing block.
Support staff members are often required to perform more than one duty. An organogram presented at the visit showed that the college had seven vacancies for lecturers and one for a head of department.
Jabulani Nkosi, the health department’s chief director, said the staffing problem should be fixed by the next intake month, as the existing organogram was being phased out.
He explained that the old structure had been adopted with the merger of the Elijah Mango College and the nursing college. “We sent a team to do a full investigation on an ideal organogram and it should be fixed with the 2017 intake next month,” he said.
Allegations that acceptance to study was being sold by officials to students for R5 000 are being investigated by the department.
“If these allegations are true, they need to be stopped because they are tarnishing the name of the college,” said committee member, Jeanette Nghondzweni.
Nkosi said they had found that prospective students were often given the names of officials who were not in on the scheme, to use when buying enrolment, which made it difficult to catch the perpetrators.
Health failed to lay charges against one such an official after the person refunded the prospective student before she could report them to the police.
Committee chairman, Patricia Ngobeni said there was no need to name and shame anyone.
“This should be an indictment on all of us to do better in order to prevent this from ever happening again,” she said.
The student representative council called on the department to maintain student quarters at the Elijah Mango College. Its current state has, according to it, made the students vulnerable to muggings and other attacks.
