Health dept ‘ignoring the basics’ – trade union

How can Gauteng approve its health budget without focusing on how to fix existing problems first, says Lerato Mthunzi, general secretary of the Health and Allied Workers Indaba Trade Union.

“They are not focusing on the fundamentals which are the three basic things: human resources, material resources and the infrastructure that needs to be improved to increase outcomes of patient care and reduce mortality rates in our hospitals,” she said.

She also blamed the top management of the department for shielding corruption.

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‘Patients who could have been saved are dying’

“They are concealing a lot of corruption by having an MEC [Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko] who has no clue of what she is doing and keeps appointing chief executive officers in hospitals who have zero to no experience. Her last administration was a total disaster.”

Cancer patients who could have been saved are dying, said DA Gauteng shadow health MEC Jack Bloom.

This is after opposition parties failed to reject the budget vote last week, which could have been used as leverage to make demands on how it should be spent.

“It’s a pity they let go of that leverage, especially for cancer patients. Some people worry that if they don’t vote for the budget then there is no money to operate,” said Bloom.

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However, according to the Public Finance Management Act, hospitals would still have had 45% of funds from the previous year.

Mthunzi said: “We don’t think there is anything tangible that they can achieve, given who is at the political helm of health care in Gauteng.”

The union said the reappointment of the MEC was “truly disappointing because it means the Gauteng provincial government did not learn any lessons from her poor performance under the previous administration. It is doubtful the province will achieve its goals of service delivery.”

Bloom said the frustration is that they are not spending the budget properly.

“We are in court because we don’t know how they spent the money last year.”

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Civil society organisations like Section27 and the Cancer Alliance took the department to court for their failure to spend over R700 million allocated to cancer patients, as well as the failure to outsource radiation services.

Bloom said the failure of opposition parties to use their powers to reject the budget means “the crooks are still in charge. They want to keep their multiple scams going and to protect the looters.”

“We are also concerned about poor emergency response times, high neonatal deaths, failure to pay suppliers in good time, low childhood immunisation, inadequate maintenance and non-completion of capital projects.”