Pretoria - The Young Nurses Indaba Trade Union has called on the state to develop a proper disaster management plan as a response to the Boksburg tanker explosion in December.
The union noted that the Gauteng provincial government hosted a healing service to honour fallen heroes following the explosion but said the government and state, as a whole, should have learnt lessons from the disaster.
“We need much more than healing services. We need a proper disaster management plan and resources to deal with day-to-day emergencies,” said union president Rich Sicina.
“As a union, we are also mourning the loss of Nompumelelo Shezi, our union member who died as a result of the severe injuries she sustained after the explosion. Nompumelelo was a nurse at Tambo Memorial Hospital, and hours before the explosion she recorded a video of herself joyfully entering the workplace before her shift.
“We lost a very capable, passionate and dedicated nursing sister to this tragedy. It is our considered view that possibly the number of lives lost could have been reduced if we had a better disaster management plan to mitigate against incidents of this nature.”
According to an investigation by the Institute for Security Studies, the driver of the gas tanker tried desperately to keep the public away from the scene of the incident, Sicina said.
“This was something he did on his own with the help of a security guard and one or two bystanders, but it seems there were no police to help him secure the scene and keep people away. Eventually, the explosion occurred, killing 38 people, including bystanders. If some of those people had been removed from the scene on time, it is likely that the number of people who died would have been less.”
Sicina said the recent incident of a petrol tanker, which crashed onto a bridge on Kliprivier Drive on the N12 exit south of Johannesburg, highlighted this again. Twelve hours or more after the truck had crashed, it had not been removed from the road, and traffic had not been diverted away from the scene. If that truck had exploded, there would have been another disaster.
The state is not adequately prepared to deal with disasters of this magnitude, Sicina said.
“As a union, we are getting first-hand accounts from workers that they often have to do their work without proper equipment, such as boots. Sometimes, they are called out to put out a fire, but there is no water in the fire tanks. There are countless stories of the struggles of firefighters and emergency services personnel in our country, and their struggles are directly linked to a lack of resources.
“Furthermore, the private sector has taken over the role of responding to emergencies. The emergence of privately owned companies like Netcare 911, Emer-G-Med, ER24 and others is a clear example of the failure of the state to provide reliable basic emergency services to the community. The shortage of staff, the shortage of ambulances and even personnel to manage the emergency hotline 10177 for ambulance services has enabled the private sector to milk this space.
“The state has relinquished its responsibilities, and it now relies on the private sector to do this work. As a result, the private sector is making a fortune because of a lack of proper planning, proper management and a lack of crucial resources.”
The union also said many public hospitals were in a shocking state because of poor infrastructure. Sometimes, sections of hospitals were closed down because of the poor infrastructure, and this added to the already over-burdened public health system.
“Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, Helen Joseph, Charlotte Maxeke, and others are examples of how some of our public hospitals are falling apart. There are buildings, wards or offices which have been abandoned in many public health-care facilities because of infrastructure issues.”
It said the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure and Development had been let off the hook as it was failing to manage the infrastructure of these hospitals properly.
Pretoria News