Unemployed pharmacists picket outside Limpopo Dept of Health

Unemployed pharmacists picket outside Limpopo Dept of Health

A group of unemployed pharmacists who have completed community service are calling on the Limpopo Department of Health to employ them permanently. The pharmacists picketed outside the Department’s offices in Polokwane. Most of them were funded by the Department to study pharmacy. They say after spending two years doing their internships and community service training

A group of unemployed pharmacists who have completed community service are calling on the Limpopo Department of Health to employ them permanently. The pharmacists picketed outside the Department’s offices in Polokwane.

Most of them were funded by the Department to study pharmacy. They say after spending two years doing their internships and community service training at rural hospitals, they have seen the dire need for pharmacists in the province.

“The government paid for my bursary throughout my four years of study and then I completed my community service with the same government, Limpopo Department of Health. I have been unemployed and we are here to seek employment since we just can’t sit and waste away the skills and knowledge that we gained, and waste investments that the government has invested in us.”

“I got into pharmacy with this passion of wanting to help people so it still pains me that at this stage I am unemployed and then we have people who are in hospitals in long queues at the pharmacy every day and they are not getting assisted because we don’t have pharmacists at public hospitals and at clinics as well.”

Limpopo Health Department spokesperson, Neil Shikwambana says there are currently no funds for employing additional Pharmacists.

“There are basically no statutory requirements that say once a person has completed community service they must then come in. Now we understand the plight, it is not an ideal situation that they are out there unemployed but the reality is that there are many factors involved, there are issues of resources that would dictate to us how many health care professionals we need. The reality is that we might take as many health care professionals as possible but we also need support, because a pharmacist, even if they are in surplus, they cannot pull files, they cannot clean.”

 

Original Story by www.sabcnews.com

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