S WAZILAND S WAZILAND N D URSES U NION C OUNTRY REPORT A SSOCIATION / EMOCRATIC N URSES H APPY V ALLEY 12 F EBRUARY 2010 Sibusiso S. Lushaba General Secretary

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ACKGROUND

  The Swaziland Nurses Association is a professional organization and a trade union for nurses.

It was established in 1965 under the nurses and midwives act and registered in 1994 as a trade union for nurses .

 Duly recognized in 1999 as collective bargaining vehicle for nurses.

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ISSION

 SNA exists for the purpose of influencing social policy, improving socio-economic standards for nurses, promoting excellence in nursing practice,management,research and education, supporting and empowering the nursing council, networking with similar organizations locally and internationally.

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NVIRONMENT

 SNA is organizing in a hostile environment.

   HIV prevalence is at 26% and income poverty at 66% In as much as there has been substantive improvement in per capita spending by government on health it has been proven through research that health care financing will not be sustainable through national budget systems.

The current health financing systems renders health services inaccessible to the poor.

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NVIRONMENT

   The leading causes of death are TB, malignant neoplasm's and Diabetes mellitus.

The global economic recession has crippled us as an organization as one of the biggest companies in the country is closing down. At this company they are nurses, our spouses, children employed there and its closure will directly or indirectly affect us as an organization.

Our beautiful country is undemocratic, therefore it is difficult for us to achieve our goals. Rights of nurses are threatened due to the proposed public service bill and charter that seeks to make unions puppets of the regime , and crafted to instill fear on us so that we only pat our government on the back

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NVIRONMENT

  As a union we believe that we are shop stewards of the nation, and we are concerned with service delivery that pertains to health and nursing issues such as drug shortages. It is for this reason that we resolved in our recent conference to soldier on in the trenches that we are in so that at the end we have an environment where we can strive and our rights as nurses and workers are protected.

As we are gathered here there is no learning taking place in institutions of higher learning in the country as students embarked in a concerted strike action all over the country, student leaders were detained by police.

P OLICY I NFLUENCE AND ADVOCATING ON ISSUES OF HUMAN RESOURCES FOR HEALTH    SNA has lobbied over the years for the establishment of a health service commission. The commission is responsible for expediting the recruitment of health care workers especially nurses as the central government agencies responsible or recruitment are not performing up to acceptable standards.

As we speak the health service commission is in a bill form and will be tabled to parliament for it to be passed into law.

SNA has been instrumental in developing of career path for nurses, Nursing standard Revised scope of practice, Essential minimum package for primary health care needs and the nursing bill.

SNA PROJECTS

    Girl child education project.

Wellness Centre for Health Care Workers Mobile Library.

Work Place Violence.

DURBAN ICN CONGRESS

     ICN held its first congress in Africa in Durban South Africa hosted by DENOSA. DENOSA strategically chose us as one of the professional visit sites.

This led to a number of meetings between DENOSA and SNA with a sole mission of ensuring that the congress be an African congress.

Resources were mobilized and indeed we were able to send a delegation of 21 nurses for the first time.

The professional visits were a success as nurses from Denmark, Sweden, Canada, Australia and Greece made the delegation from Durban for the professional visits. They were taken to the cultural village where they were entertained and speeches from the organisation and the ministry of health.

SNA is grateful to DENOSA for demonopolising the ICN Congress.

SNA POLICY CONFERENCE

    We were able to have our policy conference which is non-elective.

We were able to dissect ourselves and discovered that we are thin on the ground as an organisation and very strong at National level.

This renders our members not members of the organisation(SNA) but members of members. Our members believe that they are members of the organisation by paying subscriptions only yet what is crucial is active participation of each members within the structures of the union.

The conference resolved that it is not acceptable that there is no proper gender representation within the national executive committee in particular and all structures of the union in general.

SNA POLICY CONFERENCE

  We formulated a gender policy and a amended our constitution to address that.

Believing that education is the backbone of any union structure we resolved to have an education program that is based on the struggle of nurses and their daily experience at the work place.

  We believe that with proper capacity building the patriarchal face of our organisation will change.

The internal trade union dynamics and forces forced us to consider change of name.

AFFILIATION

    Locally we are affiliated to the Swaziland Federation of Trade unions.

Internationally to SANNAM, International Council of Nurses and Public Services International.

Our affiliation to SANNAM has really opened our eyes to the fact that we have to be financially viable and self sustaining.

This will help us so that we are independent in all our endeavors and not push the hidden agenda of the donor countries.

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ONCLUSION

 It is important for us that we unite and strengthen each other so that we are a strong nursing voice in the region that will affect and change the face of nursing globally.