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Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya. Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg).
June 6, 2003. Posted to the web June 12, 2003. AllAfrica.com.
Locally deployed Cuban doctors who refuse to pay the compulsory 57% of their
salaries to their government or send their 15-year-old children back to their
motherland, can do so without fear of being fired from South African hospitals.
This was the interpretation of Ishana Hassim, the attorney for some of the
seven Cuban doctors who won a Labour Court application reversing a Limpopo
health department decision to fire them from various provincial hospitals
earlier this year.
The court ruled that the doctors could be refused the right to practice only
if they had been deregistered by the Health Professions Council.
The Limpopo Health Department fired the doctors, saying they had violated
the terms of a government-to-government agreement between South Africa and Cuba
by either seeking permanent residence status, marrying South Africans or
refusing to send back to Cuba their children who had turned 15.
The agreement also provided that the doctors would pay their government 57%
of their earnings in South Africa.
In February the Limpopo health department's senior general manager Dr
Morwamphaga Nkadimeng sent letters to the seven doctors terminating their
employment.
"Having opted out of the agreement it follows that he can no longer be
treated under the conditions of the said agreement. This equally implies that
the condition of his registration with the Health Pro- fessions Council of South
Africa has also lapsed," Nkadimeng wrote in one letter to a hospital
superintendent.
The hospital was also ordered to inform the doctors to produce proof of
registration with the Health Professions Council within 48 hours or leave the
hospitals and the accommodation provided for them.
Department spokesperson Alu-wani Netsianda said they were still studying the
judgement and waiting for the Health Professions Council's discussion on the
matter before deciding on the next step.
One of the doctors, Jorge Luis Perez-Donato, said he was relieved to see the
back of the case.
"I did not believe that after seven years of serving in South Africa we
would have to fight so hard to demonstrate our loyalty. It is very difficult to
understand why we had to spend so much money going to the high courts when we
could have used our mental energies to treat our patients," said Dr
Perez-Donato.
Hassim accused Nkadimeng of refusing to sign the work permit application of
some of the doctors.
"Now we are forced to ask for an order that a warrant of arrest to jail
Nkadimeng is issued or that he sign the application," said Hassim. | 
