Jobless doctors told they're 'loud' and costly to hire

Unemployed doctors are apparently more vocal than other jobless health professionals, while their salaries are too expensive for an underfunded health system to absorb, a senior Department of Health official has told Parliament.

Dr Mathabo Mathebula made the extraordinary remarks as MPs questioned why qualified doctors remained unemployed while public hospitals battled staffing shortages.

Responding to the committee, Mathebula said doctors were not the only health professionals struggling to find employment, but their complaints attracted more attention.

"It's not only doctors that we require in the system. We need other health professionals as well, and they are also unemployed. It's just that the doctors become louder when they are not employed," she said.

She argued that the department needed sufficient funding to employ health professionals across the board, but acknowledged that doctors' salaries placed a particularly heavy burden on already strained provincial budgets.

"We hope one day we will have a sufficient budget to have these doctors employed, taking into cognisance that doctors' salaries are a bit high, and with the little budget we already have, employing a doctor takes a lot of that budget," Mathebula said.

Her remarks came during the NCOP Select Committee on Social Services' consideration of the department's 2025/26 annual report on Wednesday, 28 October.

ANC MP Pat Sibande questioned why doctors were still unemployed despite additional funding having been made available to the health system.

He said the situation was so distressing that it made him want to cry.

"I even want to weep about the issue of the non-employment of doctors. Why, when there was plus-minus R6 billion to R7 billion set aside for the department, to be utilised by some of these provinces?" Sibande asked.

Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi told MPs that National Treasury had allocated R20.9 billion over three years to begin reversing a decade of austerity in the health sector.

The first allocation amounted to R6.7 billion.

Motsoaledi said the national department and all nine provinces had agreed at the National Health Council to use the additional funding for four priorities, the first being the employment of 1,200 doctors who had completed community service.

The plan also included employing 200 nurses and 250 other health professionals.

"Firstly, if you remember, there was a problem then of unemployment of doctors who have completed community service. And we agreed that we'll hire 1,200 of them. We'll also hire 200 nurses and 250 other health workers with that money," Motsoaledi said.

But there was a catch. The money was transferred to provinces through their equitable share allocations rather than as a ring-fenced grant specifically for hiring health professionals.

This meant provincial governments had discretion over how to spend the money.

In his May budget vote speech, Motsoaledi said 933 doctors who had completed community service were employed between January and March 2026.

However, the department's latest explanation raises questions about how many of the promised 1,200 doctors have actually been employed and what has happened to the remainder of the funding.

It is also not the first time the department has pointed to doctors' salaries when explaining the failure to absorb unemployed medical professionals.

In 2025, a senior health official told Bhekisisa's Health Beat that public-sector doctors earned disproportionately more than other health professionals.

The South African Medical Association disputed that argument, maintaining that the problem lay with the department's management of its budget rather than doctors' remuneration.

Following Wednesday's meeting, Parliament's statement reiterated the department's position that it hoped to one day have sufficient funding to employ unemployed doctors.

The department has been asked how many doctors remain unemployed, how many of the 1,200 promised positions have been filled and how much of the additional allocation has been spent on recruitment.