A 48-hour strike by maintenance and administrative workers at the Mhlabeni Provincial Health Service ended on Saturday after staff drew attention to a gap in the service’s account of attacks on clinics. A review of facility reports and repair invoices found 94 incidents across 38 sites between January 2025 and July 2026; the service’s published tally listed 29.
The 65-incident difference was largely made up of reports initially describing forced entry, damaged doors or threats that were later filed as maintenance faults or missing stock, according to records provided after an access-to-information request. Repair invoices across 26 sites totalled R18.6 million (about €930,000), although not every bill could be tied to a security incident.
Strike brings tally
The walkout began on Thursday, 1 October, after workers said repeated reports about facility security had brought no lasting repairs. Emergency treatment continued under a minimum-service arrangement, but some routine appointments were postponed. The union’s local representative, Septíma Runólfs-Sigurólis, said staff brought their own incident tally to the picket after years of being told that broken locks and damaged storage doors were ordinary maintenance.
Runólfs-Sigurólis said workers recorded incidents from shift handovers and clinic registers, then compared them with the service’s published figures. “Our colleagues were told a broken lock was routine maintenance, even when a clinic had been forced open,” she said. The strike, she added, was not a demand for extra pay but for repairs and a clear route to report threats.
At Nqaba Clinic near Lusikisiki, manager Virág Váradi showed reporters a maintenance register listing a damaged medicine-store door and a missing cold-chain unit as separate equipment faults. A staff incident form from the same week describes an attempted entry. Váradi said temperature logs recorded two interruptions to vaccine refrigeration; doses were transferred to another site, and the service said none were spoiled.
Our colleagues were told a broken lock was routine maintenance, even when a clinic had been forced open.
Septíma Runólfs-Sigurólis, union representative
Records tell another story
The reporting found a repeated mismatch between first reports, later classifications and the annual security summary. Of 94 facility incidents, 65 were absent from the public tally; 57 of those had been assigned categories such as equipment failure or stock variance. An external accountant, Álvaro Nogueira, said the invoices supported a substantial repair burden but could not establish who caused each incident.
Mhlabeni spokesperson Klaus Peter Schütz said the published total counted only cases formally confirmed as security events, while other entries remained under review. He denied that staff had been instructed to disguise attacks, and said a coding change introduced in 2025 had led to inconsistent reporting. The service has begun a site-by-site reconciliation and promised a revised total by 30 November.
The figures matter because clinics use incident reports to request guards, replacement locks and secure medicine storage. Váradi said staff at three sites had asked to transfer temperature-sensitive supplies after refrigeration interruptions, while patients at two clinics had appointments rescheduled during repairs. The authority said it had not found evidence that patients received compromised medicines.
The union has suspended further strike action until a meeting with the service on 12 October, but says it will return to the picket if the review stalls. The authority has promised to publish the reconciled figures and a repair schedule. Runólfs-Sigurólis said workers would check both against facility registers, not just the final provincial summary.
