Gungubele unveiled a fleet of new service vehicles, which includes 48 ambulances, nine paramedic response cars and nine fire fighting vehicles, which he believes will boost emergency services in the city.
Gauteng MEC for Health and Social Development, Hope Papo, commended the city for taking the initiative to purchase the ambulances, thus, complimenting the service provided by the provincial government.
“We thank you for taking it upon yourselves to improve health services in your city.
“As the Gauteng Department of Health, we will also be allocating a couple of obstetric ambulances to all municipalities in the province, which will cater only for women giving birth,” said Papo, as he spoke at the unveiling of the fleet.
According to metro spokesperson, Sam Modiba, the city of Ekurhuleni has taken this step to alleviate delays in service delivery due to constraints presented by ageing vehicles.
“The procurement of the vehicles is the delivery of the promise made by the mayor, earlier this year during his State of the City Address, to turn things around where service delivery is concerned,” said Modiba.
He explained that the municipality has also zoomed into its emergency call taking centre, which has been the subject of public outcries recently.
“The Call Centre remains the most critical priority for the metro, hence, we have invested approximately R20-million to upgrade the facility, a project which will be completed by end of this month.
“Furthermore, within the next few weeks, we will be advertising an additional 200 posts for call takers,” said Modiba.
“The intervention means that the centre will be able to accommodate 50 additional call centre agents on a four-shift system instead of the current 12 agents.”
