Allow me to shed some light on this issue:
Doctors are not striking for a "pay increase" they are striking for the implementation of OSD (Occupation Specific Dispensation).
OSD was the Governments own idea. Simplistically it was designed so that government workers receive salaries that recognise their skills and the hours they work and that are in line with other government workers with similar training etc. Thats it, its not a complicated idea.
Everyone was very happy about this and waited patiently for it to implemented. This was 2007.
Here is the government document clearly outlining what each department can expect and when they can expect it. The doctors were promised OSD by July of 2008, that was 11 months ago.
To give you an idea of what you are dealing with: some doctors take home as little R6500/month (which includes medical aid)
Read this. These doctors earn this salary for working full time jobs with a mandatory overtime. The overtime is actually a huge portion of the salary but no matter how much work they do they only get paid for 80 hours overtime a month. Many of these doctors are working 200 hours of overtime a month which means that they are actually working for 120 hours every month for free!!
Your typical intern at Baragwanath can be managing 30-60 patients at any one time. This is at least 3x as much as doctors in the rest of the world. That same intern will work 116 (or more) hours per week, largely unpaid, while exposing themselves to HIV, hepatitis and everything else you can imagine. All this after 6 years of studying with annual fees of between R30 000 and R40 000 a year, that can amount to almost a quarter of a million rand in debt.
Now these doctors are tired of waiting for the government because until now the gvt "knew" that doctors would never strike and therefore just ignored the situation. So we have come to a loggerheads, the doctors are ready to give up because, lets face it, you wouldn't put up with this either and the goverment are pretending like this is all new to them.
They are demanding a minimum of 50% increase which sound like a lot but isn't. Metro bus drivers were striking because they wanted drivers with 5 years experience to get >R8000/month. Do you think it makes sense that bus drivers earn more than doctors?
Here is another government document which shows that some nurses actually received 88% increases. Pilots in the employ of the state earn far more than doctors yet are bound by very stringent laws limiting how many hours they are allowed to work in a row. Doctors are paid peanuts by comparison but are carrying out life saving procedures well past 30 hours into their sometimes 36 hour shifts.
There really is no option here, pay the doctors or they will leave. The health care system (which is hanging on by a thread) will collapse and with it the country. Logic really dictates the only possible outcome here.
