Community first: Ward 60 residents demand priority for local hospital jobs

Residents in Ward 60 in the west of Pretoria, in collaboration with the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco), marched to the Pretoria West District Hospital on August 5 over an alleged lack of local hiring practices.

The residents say the hospital has been hiring general workers from other cities and provinces and are aggrieved that they do not look to home first.

The handful of marchers conveyed in Philp Nel Park, accompanied by SAPS officers.

Community leader and march organiser Sindile Tauyane said: “We feel as a community that for the hospital to appoint people that are not within the community radius is unfair while we have people in the community that are unemployed. We have RDP structures owned by unemployed single mothers who depend on an R350 grant and that is very little as far as I’m concerned”.

Tauyane said rumours have circulated in the community that hospital management is showing favouritism in its hiring processes, whereby relatives and friends are first considered. He also took aim at Ward 60 councillor Mpati Ramphile, saying that since his appointment, the relationship between the hospital and the community has deteriorated.

Another resident and one of the community’s representatives from Danville Ward 60, Thabo Makola, also blamed Ramphile, saying the councillor must be involved in public service delivery and stay out of private business dealings.

“If a councillor is hindering people from getting work opportunities in the hospital, it’s a concern to us. We want to expose him, he was supposed to be here and you guys were supposed to be interviewing him but he’s not engaging the community. The community is very dissatisfied with him because he employed his wife at the hospital as an administrator, employed his friends there as well and even created fake residential addresses for those friends to work at that hospital, to do the maintenance,” Makola said.

He said he engaged the councillor on several occasions but was sent from pillar to post and accused Ramphile of not engaging with the community by being evasive.

“How can [you] employ a person from Limpopo when there are people just a walk away from you who can render services? It’s a problem, a serious problem that we are having. There’s a new bill that has been signed, the Public Procurement Act 28 of 2024, and we need them to implement that here. People from Limpopo are supposed to be hired in their proximity,” said Makola.

Fellow community leader Papi Monakgotla said that as a government hospital, Pretoria West District Hospital should not concern itself with matters regarding councillors.

“This is not a municipal office, this is not Tshwane House, this is a government hospital, a provincial hospital. So they’ll say councillor said this, the councillor said that, is this Tshwane House? The councillor can’t determine what the hospital does,” Monakgotla said.

Acting hospital CEO Dr Sizeka Maweya received the memorandums of both Sanco and the ward 60 residents.

He didn’t comment on the allegations against the ward councillor, but assured residents they would respond within the allocated timeline.

“We appreciate you all coming forward, you’ve given us seven days to respond and you can be assured we will respond within that period. We also appreciate emphasising the issue of peace because this is our community, and the hospital is in our community, so we really appreciate keeping this peaceful,” said Maweya.

He said the hospital would investigate the allegations brought forward by the community in due course.

In Sanco’s memorandum, the organisation claims the area is rampant with high levels of unemployment, crime, and drug use and that it is the hospital’s responsibility to help offer work opportunities to residents.

The demands include:

– Prioritisation of local employment

– Transparent hiring practices

– Address nepotism

– Implement skills development programmes

– Regular engagement meetings with the community

Ward 60 residents in their memorandum called for their councillor to be excluded from all hospital-related activities, claiming that he cares for his friends and not the community.

Their demands include:

– An update on the security guards that have been employed by the hospital.

– Disclosure of EPWP workers’ positions regarding cleaners, porters, cookers, and administration.

Rekord has reached out to Ramphile at the time of publishing and will update the article in due course.

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