R87-million tender leaves DA dismayed
JOBURG – The Gauteng Health Department has awarded an R87-million tender to a company to manage the payment of about 9 000 community health workers, a decision which has left the Democratic Alliance DA dismayed.
DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Health Jack Bloom said the tender has been awarded to Smart Purse Solutions Pty Ltd for three years, and they are expected to procure and install biometric devices at health facilities, develop community health worker (CHW) monitoring software, validate and verify workers, and pay them stipends which range from R2 500 to R4 000 per month.
Bloom said, “It seems to me that this is an expensive contract for work that the department should be able to do itself. The department does payments for all its other employees, so why pay extra for a company to pay the community health workers?”
He added that there had been problems in the past with the payment of community health workers, but the department should fix its own incompetence rather than incur unnecessary expenses.
Meanwhile, Gauteng Department of Health spokesperson, Steve Mabona confirmed that the department has appointed the service provider for a period of three years to offer the following services:
- Procurement and installation of a biometric device per health facility.
- Development of CHW monitoring software.
- Train all stakeholders on the use and management of the system.
- Enrolment of CHW on the system.
- Validation and verification of database and removal of ghost workers.
- Payments of stipends to CHWs based on hours worked.
- Establishment and management of a call centre for all CHW queries.
- Submission of monthly management reports.
- Provision of IT support for all health-care facilities.
Mabona said, “This decision was taken after we encountered challenges in paying the community health workers directly. These included, among others, the payment of ghost workers and community health workers that did not report to work.”
