Race quotas cripple hospitals - Indian & White Doctors Blocked

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Race quotas cripple hospitals

03 June 2007
Claire Keeton

Surgery cancelled as province insists on hiring nonexistent black doctors.

Up to 10 operations a day are being cancelled as a rigid affirmative-action policy in the Western Cape blocks white and Indian doctors from filling vital vacant senior posts.

Specialists are waiting for up to two years to have their appointments finalised while the provincial Cabinet stalls on their posts, waiting for black candidates to fill them instead.

Now two of the country’ s top academic hospitals, Tygerberg and Groote Schuur, which treat thousands of patients from throughout the province and the Eastern and Northern Cape , are under huge strain.

The biggest losers are disadvantaged patients who already have to wait months, or even years, for surgery.

The equity policy that gives preference to black candidates has been labelled “playing racial politics with patients’ lives”.

There are too few black specialists applying for the jobs at both Groote Schuur and Tygerberg.

Just last month at Tygerberg Hospital, the heads of the various surgical departments were notified that operation lists would be cut indefinitely because of a shortage of anaesthetists.

When they questioned the theatre manager about this, they were told that two senior anaesthetist posts had been advertised but only white males had applied.

The hospital had recommended they be appointed but all applications have to be approved by the Western Cape Cabinet and Health MEC. They insisted the posts be readvertised to try to get equity applicants.

The Sunday Times spoke to Professor James Loock of the ear, nose and throat department, who was forced to operate with a locum (temporary) anaesthetist to avoid harmful delays for his patients.

One of them was a boy with an ear condition for which surgery is mandatory to prevent life- threatening complications.

Dr Fred Mattheyse — one of the candidates whose appointment was deferred — is now leaving for Australia.

He said: “I’m leaving reluctantly but I have reached a ceiling in my career here.”

Groote Schuur’s head of surgery, Professor Del Kahn, said the equity requirements were having the most impact on the choice of registrars, who are specialists in training.

“We have been obliged to take equity candidates who do not meet our minimum requirements, and Indian doctors are being discriminated against in this province,” he said.

He said the filling of two top posts at the hospital in the past six months had taken more than two years to finalise because the candidates had been white.

However, Professor Bongani Mayosi, head of cardiology at Groote Schuur, said he had successfully motivated for three senior posts to be filled by white male specialists, while training black specialists for the future.

“Employment equity is a project I support very much but institutions have got to plan properly so that the outcome is better than before,” he said.

Kahn also slammed budget cuts of more than R30-million at Groote Schuur and Tygerberg.

“We will, for example, have to close at least 60 beds and cut the number of outpatients. Where will these patients go?”

The Western Cape’s policy comes as an increasing number of black medical professionals are being lured abroad by attractive conditions and pay.

Valkenberg Hospital has also struggled to secure an appointment for a top post. This week the Western Cape readvertised the position.

Dr Thabo Rangaka, president of the South African Society of Psychiatrists, said South Africa had few black psychiatrists and it would be difficult to get black applicants in the public sector.

Asked about the province’s equity approach, Western Cape Health spokes man Faiza Steyn said: “The Department of Health has an approved recruitment and selection policy as well as an approved employment equity plan. Appointments are made in terms of said policy.”

The Democratic Alliance’s health spokesman, Gareth Morgan, said: “This amounts to playing racial politics with patients’ lives.”

Dr Abdul Rahman, the chief operating officer of the Gauteng Health Department, said an employment equity policy existed in government but his department would not implement it.

“We are recruiting across the board and desperately trying to fill vacant posts ... We simply don’t have the doctors and nurses and therefore cannot implement such a policy.”

The Eastern Cape Health Department also said it could not afford such a policy. — Additional reporting by Simpiwe Piliso and Megan Power
Click to expand...
Sunday Times
 
Perhaps the ANC will use this for their next re-election propaganda speeches, showing that their are so determined to give black people a chance that they'd even sacrifice the lives of other people to make sure that the whites don't have the opportunity to take their jobs.

The funny thing is, this is in DIRECT contrast to that news article I read the other day (on mybroadband, don't really want to go looking for it now) where some MEC or Minister said that they NEED professionals in SA and wouldn't discriminate. And here they're at it again! Unbelievable! The apartheid government thought them well it seems.

They will certainly spare no lives to make sure white people don't get a job in SA, which is what I've been saying over and over. It's not about racism or correcting the wrongs of past anymore, it's about getting white people the hell out of Africa where they don't belong.
 
Wouldn't make more sense to use the BEE excuse if there's an influx of black doctors rather than a shortage? When there's a shortage, you take what you get.
 
This is nothing less than Black Apartheid. Racist policies are implemented with no regard for reality or the consequences and the true victims are the poor and the helpless.
 
meeting minimum requirements, hmm, thank God I'm on private medical aid, overpriced? yes, but at least a better quality of service. These bigwigs who make such blatantly stupid rules, could not give a damn, they go the best medical care institutes. Please don't parrot on about Manto going to a government hospital, she had the best qulaified people looking after her.

Just another case of vark the poor!
 
This exact situation was confirmed by a relative of mine who is a surgeon. I find it despicable.
 
Hey!!! Why the Indians also classed??? WTF!!
 
Yeah racial discrimination is fine, as long as its not you suffering it. :rolleyes:
 
Racial discrimination is never fine but what sucks is Indians having suffered under its yoke in the apartheid days and apparently in the new South Africa as well.
 
my budgies suffered too, I'm sure, but the black one suffered more than the yellow or the blue ones.
and because everyone and their cat suffered, we will not employ those competent to fill positions but instead we will play a race game. It is insane.

This as you will see, will get us nowhere.

*yawns*
 
The_Omlette said:
Racial discrimination is never fine but what sucks is Indians having suffered under its yoke in the apartheid days and apparently in the new South Africa as well.
Click to expand...
I never knew an Indian who suffered as much during apartheid. Having said that, I don't think imposing old apartheid rules and laws is the best way to go about things.

In fact I know several black med students who have NO INTENTION of staying in this country. The last thing they want to do is sit in a mud hut in KZN treating the locals because the government says they have to.
 
Skeptik said:
In fact I know several black med students who have NO INTENTION of staying in this country. The last thing they want to do is sit in a mud hut in KZN treating the locals because the government says they have to.
Click to expand...

.....especially when they get paid vast sums of money in the west.

They will move and the spiral down continues!:(
 
Skeptik said:
I never knew an Indian who suffered as much during apartheid. Having said that, I don't think imposing old apartheid rules and laws is the best way to go about things.

In fact I know several black med students who have NO INTENTION of staying in this country. The last thing they want to do is sit in a mud hut in KZN treating the locals because the government says they have to.
Click to expand...

Maybe they didnt suffer suffer but they were certainly restricted!
 
Skeptik said:
I never knew an Indian who suffered as much during apartheid.
Click to expand...

I dont know about that mate. I have to be fair and say that in the "suffering under apartheid" stakes, black folks drew the short straw by a long, long margin.

However its not as though Indians enjoyed the privilege that the paler classes did under apartheid. Its not fair to say that Indians did not feel the brunt of apartheid laws that were designed to opress people of colour.

I suppose the shortest way for me to explain this is to say that when an Indian was faced with the choice of sitting on a park bench marked "Blankes" and on marked "Nie Blankes" his best bet would not have been on the "Blankes" bench despite its possibly nicer location.

And that theory applied to all facets of life...
 
It also depended on where you lived. Cape Town was very liberal. There wasn't much change needed for jobs in the City, for example. All the shop workers were Coloureds and Indians. The new difference is higher wages and more tax.
 
One has to wonder though: is this about righting the wrongs of the past, or is it about retribution. A line has been overstepped, and unfortunately peoples lives are very very much at stake.

BEE and AA should work like this: if there is a suitable black candidate as equally qualified and experienced as a non-black colleague, then by all means, employ him or her. Now when there exists no such candidate and you would rather wait until one comes skipping along, possibly years down the line, then you should be smacked over the head with a cod. A frozen one.
 
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