Civil servants protest against ‘exorbitant’ medical aid contributions

Hundreds of civil servants from several areas, affiliated to the Public Servants Association, marched through the streets of Mthatha on Saturday in protest against ‘exorbitant’ medical aid contributions. The march culminated in the handing over of a memorandum of demands to a representative from the Government Employees Medical Scheme (Gems) including the immediate scrapping of a 9.5% membership contribution implemented at the beginning of February which they described as “economically unjustifiable, socially regressive and a betrayal of the scheme’s founding purpose”. Instead they called for a revised, affordable and socially defensible contribution structure to be developed in consultation with organised labour.

“Gems was never intended to operate as a commercial enterprise. It was established to ensure affordable, equitable access to health care for public servants, particularly lower- and middle-income workers,” the memorandum stated. “The implementation of a 9.8% increase in January, reduced to a 9.5% membership contribution increase effective on February 1, after a 13.4% increase in 2025, represents a cumulative escalation of more than 23% over two years.

Public servants will not continue to fund structural inefficiencies, governance weaknesses and cost drivers that have not been transparently addressed.” The PSA reportedly has about 14,000 members in the Eastern Cape alone, according to one provincial shop steward, Buyisile Mkhendlana. Meanwhile, the memorandum also highlighted that public servants were now facing the erosion of their real wages, escalating household debts, rising food, transport and energy costs, as well as increasing medical aid contributions that far outpaced salary adjustments. While many were now downgrading their medical aid benefits, their families were being forced into “impossible trade-offs between health care and basic survival”.

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Contributions must prioritise health care, not bureaucracy. “Contributions must prioritise health care, not bureaucracy,” they argued. Among other things, they also demanded an urgent review of the scheme’s funding model, including the statutory 25% reserve ratio requirement, the impact of reserve accumulation on contribution increases, alternative mechanisms to stabilise contributions, strengthened governance and consequence management, meaningful labour representation in governance structures and alignment of executive and board remuneration with public service norms.

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