MBABANE: Victoria Mhlanga who worked for government for over 30 years as a community health care worker(Umgcugcuteli) said she was shocked after government officials told them their services were being terminated without terminal benefits.

Speaking to this Swaziland News, Mhlanga said government told them to stop working due to their old age, however, they haven’t received terminal benefits for working as community health care workers for all these years.

“I started working in 1990 receiving E20.00 per month, the money was later raised to E50.00, E100.00 and then E350.00 being the highest. We are in pain after being dumped by the government despite working all these years”, she said.

Dr Simon Zwane, the Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Health told this Swaziland News earlier that Government took a decision to ban community health care workers from visiting sick patients within their homes, he said this was meant to protect them from the COVID-19.

“When COVID-19 started, we realised the risk our Rural Health Care Motivators and other health workers faced. A good number of them are above 50 years old and some have underlying illnesses. We then significantly scaled down their movements. We also trained them on basics of this pandemic, this means whatever services they were providing prior to the pandemic have been disturbed” said the Principal Secretary.