A chronically ill woman, raising three children from the dusty streets of Tokologo, had to swallow her pride and sign herself up for food aid while panic gripped at the hearts of the whole country.
Maggie listed her name for a food parcel in March, as she dutifully stayed home as per our President’s direction. It’s not that she didn’t want to work, she was not allowed to.
As a type one diabetic with high blood pressure, Maggie has to queue from dawn until dusk at the Middelburg Provincial Hospital’s day clinic, once a month, for the dispensing of her chronic medication.
After a whole day’s queuing, she is pointed away because the clinic does not have all of her medication.
As a person with a severe medical illness, Maggie should by all intents and purposes, not be working.
But she has to.
The UIF is not enough to feed her family, and in the ripe month of August she has still not seen March’s food parcel.
Without a healthy diet, Maggie’s glucose levels become erratic, but she can’t treat that, because there is no medicine.
Maggie needs to climb into a taxi where social distancing and sanitising is not observed. According to her, there is only one taxi driver that complies with regulations but he was ousted for being too obedient.
So now chronically ill Maggie, with no food parcel or medicine, has to board an overloaded taxi to go to work.
• Meanwhile, the nurses at the Kwazamokuhle Clinic are on a go-slow because of rapidly deteriorating working conditions.
The only cleaning staff member, appointed to keep the medical institution sanitary, is on leave, and no temporary stand-in was arranged.
The request of staff for a temporary cleaner, that was issued in February, was allegedly ignored by the district manager.
Dealing with hundreds of sickly patients during a global pandemic has left the nurses too busy to clean.
• Queuing patients heatedly called the Middelburg Observer after several of them had to lay down on the grass outside the clinic in Matseleng.
The patients were so tired of waiting, as nursing staff at the clinic, who were blatantly there, helped no patients by 10:00.
The Department of Health and Steve Tshwete Local Municipality were contacted, but no comment was made by the time of going to print.
• The name Maggie was chosen for the domestic worker, who wished to remain anonymous.
