Radiation therapists at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital are leaving in droves because of unsatisfactory salary scales while the facility faces cancer treatment backlogs.
Sowetan has been reliably told that at least nine therapists have resigned in the past two years, leaving about 40 staff members to treat about 4,500 new cancer patients every year. The hospital's oncology department is the biggest cancer unit in the country and even serves patients from outside Gauteng.
Sowetan has been reliably told that the oncology department has a backlog of more than 250 patients who have been waiting to receive radiation treatment from as far back as 2016.
The therapists who spoke to Sowetan this week said their workload has been increasing steadily since the resignations. “We only treat booked patients and emergency patients whose quality of life has been severely compromised,” said a therapist.
The department of health has, however, denied the backlog claims. “This varies depending on the type of staging. For some cancers the backlog for emergent treatment is minimal, up to a week, while other cancers it can be six months – for example breast [cancer] – or three to five years for some prostate cancers that are being treated with hormonal therapy,” department spokesperson Kwara Kekana said.
She said there is an ongoing process to hire more staff and procure equipment. Without giving figures, Kekana conceded to the mass resignations.
“There has been an attrition of radiation staff from the hospital. The reasons provided by staff have been regarding career progression and appropriate remuneration,” she said.
The department and 23 radiation therapists have been at loggerheads over salary scales for more than four years. Therapists claim that some of them were unfairly remunerated after their human resources department paid them using the radiographer code, which earns them less.
Before 2002, to study radiation therapy, a student would be required to have a diagnostic radiographer qualification. However, this curriculum was later changed when the diagnostic radiography qualification was scrapped by universities. The affected 23 therapists all qualified after 2002 and were earning less than their counterparts at other hospitals.
The 23 therapists took their grievances to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), which ruled in their favour in August 2019.
“The applicants were unfairly discriminated against in respect of their right to equal pay for work of equal value, in that there were no fair and rational reasons, as submitted by the respondent, the Gauteng department of health, for the differences in pay between them and their chosen comparators,” read the award.
The CCMA also instructed the department to pay the therapists R5.7m in compensation. However, the department appealed against the ruling, saying the therapists were in different jobs to those they were compared to.
The funds are yet to be paid to the therapists as they wait for the labour court to set a date for the hearing.
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