thank you very much; we will be engaging with Department of Health in the province of KwaZulu-Natal just to understand what the meaning of the circular is. Form our understanding, the main issue that the provinces have been asked to focus on, is that we have a number of community service doctors and interns who have been trained within the system of the department that needed to be prioritised and be placed. That situation is the only aspect that we are aware of, so we will need to find out what is exactly going on in this one.
What I do know is that for any foreign doctor who is in the system that means that at the end of each year there has to be a renewal of the contract where there is authorisation given that some of the people are employed now. The Immigration Legislation always wants evidence that there is no South African suitable for a particular post, then it can be given to someone who is a foreign professional.
It makes it very tricky here because in a number of areas you might find that we are dealing with specialists who are in high need and the categories that are in need. Therefore, we need to
first understand what the province is looking at and what the circular means before we can make a public commitment of a response to it. All which have said in this House is that, we need to make sure that all the doctors who have been trained particularly those who have been on community service must be placed, those who require to work inside the government and we will do so. Those who would have come from the training in Cuba, a number close to 700 that actually needs to be placed amongst the interns.
What the provinces are working on is to look at the availability of these posts. We have also identified additional funds on saving within our own budget to assist the provinces to be able to fund these posts which are critical, in fact if I am not mistaken with the figure, in the past two months we have mobilised close to R800 million which is to support the rest of the provinces to place more and more of the health personnel in various provinces. We are looking into the matter but we will find out and then indicate to the member what it is all about.