Time to place NC Health Dept under administration was yesterday, not today
31 March 2022
In direct response to the Northern Cape Health Department’s submission today that the Democratic Alliance’s argument last week for this department to be placed under administration was outdated, the DA fully agrees – health should already have been placed under administration yesterday, not only “today”, as we previously stated.
The DA considers it ironic that the health department, which fails time and again to respond to our letters, has responded to our call for them to undergo a Section 100 intervention, with such vigour.
Ironically, the health department refers to the same Audit Report of 2020/2021 that the DA referred to, when they say the Auditor-General is happy with their progress.
Just three weeks ago, the Portfolio Committee on Health, together with the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, sat in a meeting with the office of the AG who stated that the department shows “no will” to try and recover. Health should request the Hansard and go and listen to how much despair they are causing the AG’s office, which highlighted that the health department did not even bother to attempt to put together an audit action plan, to compile an asset register on a simple Excel spreadsheet or to investigate crippling irregular expenditure.
If something has changed in the last couple of weeks, we are only too relieved to hear about it.
Our call for this department to undergo a high-level intervention is not based on “gutter politics”, as stated by Health MEC Maruping Lekwene. The only gutters involved here are the bloody gutters that previously flowed from the Kuruman mortuary because of poor and unmaintained drainage systems.
Our call for the Health Department to be placed under administration is because we are worried about the fate of the Northern Cape’s approximately 70% of the provincial population that depends on state health care.
The Annual Report for 2020/21 indicated that the state of clinics is on the decline, with only 23 facilities out of 159 achieving Ideal Clinic status compared with 101 achieving the status in 2018/19. Clearly health facilities are facing a crisis and if the MEC wants to debate the figures highlighted by the DA, then he is wasting his time.
Yes, the fluctuating figures in respect of operational ambulances, accruals, contingent liabilities and so forth will go up and down, but they remain far from stable.
Ultimately this is about people’s lives and if a department, as clearly overwhelmed as this department, cared more about its patients than it does about its ego, it would beg for help, not snub the DA’s call for it to receive help. In fact, it is even welcome to ask the DA for help, we will gladly assist.
One thing, however, that the DA will not do, is to keep quiet when we see things going wrong in health.
I will write to the portfolio committee of health requesting a full oversight inspection of health care in the Northern Cape and invite the MEC and his department to accompany us so that they can get a true feeling of what is happening at ground level.
The DA will continue to fight for our people, for those who can’t speak for themselves and for the poorest of the poor, and not just make promises before elections.
Issued by Isak Fritz, DA Northern Cape Spokesperson of Health, 31 March 2022
