Gauteng Health Department’s infrastructure is in a terrible state

19 March 2020

The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Gauteng is pleased that the Department of Health has finally come clean and admitted that its buildings pose a risk to the public.  This comes after years of disingenuity and whitewashing about the poor state of the department’s infrastructure.

The capital budget document for the 2020/21 financial year had the following to say, “the department’s infrastructure continued to suffer from a cumulative deferred maintenance backlog resulting in the deterioration of the value and functionality of facilities posing increased danger to both patients and employees.”

In 2018, a decision was taken to put all the department’s infrastructure projects on hold because of financial constraints. This moratorium has been lifted, but the financial situation has not improved to the extent required to deal decisively with infrastructure shortcomings.

A recent conditional assessment of 32 hospitals in the province indicated that an estimated amount of R6 billion was required to ensure that the facilities were compliant with health and safety requirements.

The latest budget document indicates that R1, 33 billion will be provided for this purpose over the next three years, but gives no indication as to where the rest of the money will come from. In addition, the maintenance budget for this year has been reduced by R189 million as compared to last year.

While this frank admission regarding the poor state of infrastructure is welcomed, it is concerning that the response from the administration provides no comfort that the situation will be remedied any time soon. There is simply insufficient budget to do what is required.

One response from the administration in the recent past was to create a maintenance policy. One wonders how they operated in the past without such a policy or standard operating procedures. Clearly, the lack of expertise in the department has been exposed.

There are those who see the introduction of NHI as a silver bullet in providing additional finance to fix the system. Even with additional finance, the lack of management expertise in the public sector is likely to be NHI’s death knell.

Issued by Alan Fuchs,DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Infrastructure Development and Property Management, 19 March 2020