Tembisa hospital CEO still not grilled on fishy payments

22 Augusts 2022

Despite weeks of disturbing revelations of fishy multimillion payments by the Tembisa Hospital, the hospital’s CEO Ashley Mthunzi has still not been grilled by the Gauteng Health Department in this matter.

This was disclosed last week on Friday by Head of Department Nomonde Nolutshungu at a meeting of the Gauteng Legislature’s Health Committee.

Nolutshungu said that following the first News24 exposé on 27 July of the suspicious payments flagged by murdered whistle-blower Babita Deokaran, she asked the Department’s Chief Financial Officer Lerato Madyo to respond within 24 hours as to whether Babita had ever submitted a report to her on these payments.

Madyo requested extra time to respond, and on 8 August she categorically denied that she had received such a report from Babita.

But Madyo later conceded that Babita had expressed anxiety about the Tembisa Hospital payments and they had agreed that her report should be confidential. She claimed that payments had been stopped.

These unsatisfactory responses by Madyo are further reason for her to be suspended while a forensic investigation is pursued into hundreds of Tembisa Hospital payments that total R850 million.

It is inexplicable, however, that the hospital’s CEO has not yet been asked to account for his role in this matter.

A Department report admits they “underestimated the currency of the matter” given the “relentlessness and rising public outrage.” See attached the Department's report, here

We still do not have details of the investigation that Gauteng Premier David Makhura has promised, but there should be no more delays in suspending the CFO and the Tembisa Hospital CEO.

The DA will press for a speedy and thorough investigation with regular report-backs and criminal charges against implicated people.          

Issued by Jack Bloom, DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Health, 22 August 2022