THE health and hygiene services for Alex residents will soon receive a boost through the construction of another health facility and the revamping of existing ones
Official of the city’s management and support unit, Peter Magosana, said in region E’s planning workshop at Eastbank hall. The development will be part of the city’s recently-launched Jozi@work programme which involves small, micro and medium enterprises [SMMEs] as part of local empowerment and government’s radical transformation of the economy.
Currently, the overcrowded populations of Alex, Eastbank, Westbank, Tsutsumani, Riverpark, parts of Kew, Lombardy and Wynberg rely on four clinics for primary health care
support and for referrals to the Alexandra Clinic and Edenvale Hospital. The clinics are usually overcrowded, resulting in delayed treatment and frustrated patients as they cannot seek help from other clinics if not referred by those close to their place of residence.
Magosana said a new R15-million clinic will be constructed this financial year [2014 -2015] at Riverpark. This will ease the load at Eastbank Clinic which will be allocated R3 million for upgrades next year. Also to be upgraded will be the Thoko Mngoma and 4th Avenue clinics through an allocation of R3.8 million each. Magosana further said that the repairs to the 8th Avenue clinic which was damaged during election-related violence in May, will be completed in two months to ease the load on the functioning ones.
He urged SMMEs to set themselves up as co-operatives in order to bid for this work. “The city has established regional forums, steering committees and technical task teams which will help to ensure their participation by evaluating their submissions, supporting them with capacity building, apprenticeships and also by supervising their work,” he concluded.
