The South African Emergency Personnel’s Union is saddened and condemns senseless attacks of emergency personnel which are menacing their lives without any assistance from the department by ensuring that the emergency personnel’s are protected when attending to calls.
Two emergency personnel’s were dispatched to attend to a call on the 20th of July 2024 at around 17h30 at Ka-Bokweni (clau-clau) which is situated in Mpumalanga Province when family members of the patient attacked them.
The emergency personnel’s (female and male) rushed to attend to a call at Clau-Clau section , one of the family members kept on phoning the control centre making threads that the ambulance is taking long to arrive which could result in the death of the patient. The emergency personnel’s reached to their destination but they were welcomed by a family which was exasperated on account that the personnel’s arrived very late to pick up the patient. The family members then started attacking the personnel’s fortunately they managed to escape from their hands, ran for their lives and they left the ambulance behind to catch a taxi to go report the matter at police station.
An incident like this is barbaric, cowardly and completely shocking. This is a proof that something has gone horribly wrong in our society when innocent responders, whose responsibility is to save lives by helping those in emergency situations get attacked like this by the same people who requested for their assistance.
This is not the first time our personnel’s are being threatened and attacked in this fashion this really has to stop. The community members must gather together to mitigate the unnecessary wrong which is constantly being done to the paramedics whose mandates are to serve ,help and save the people’s lives. So it’s in the interest of all of us that justice should be served and protect our paramedics at all time.
This is a clear indication to the government that it should hire and train more emergency personnel’s to minimise this kind of incidents from happening and also to provide the hospitals with enough ambulances for personnel’s to be able to attend to calls on time instead of waiting for another ambulance to return from another call.
The matter is now in the hands of the police since personnel’s opened a case and we trust that justice will be served for them. The personnel’s are safe and were not admitted to health facilities because they have minor injuries.
Furthermore, we urge the employer to arrange counselling for the personnel’s and we are still reiterating our decision for EMS workers to always arm themselves with their legal firearms to protect themselves because we are on our own.
END
Issued by SAEPU
For inquiries contact
SAEPU President
Mpho Mpogeng
071 868 6987/ 076 478 1064
Email: saepu.headoffice@gmail.com