Transformation call ‘targets behaviour’
The ANC’s call for the fundamental transformation of the financial sector is not meant to collapse the banking system, but the intention is on changing their “monopolistic behaviour”, telecommunications minister Siyabonga Cwele said on Wednesday.
Gauteng’s suspended head of health Tiego Selebano intends to appeal against the health ombudsman’s report into the deaths of at least 100 state mental patients that fingered him as one of the key actors in the scandal.
The report found the Gauteng health department had transferred 1,300 patients from Life Esidimeni facilities owned by JSE-listed private hospital group Life Healthcare to unlicensed nongovernment organisations (NGOs) that did not have the resources to care for them.
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi on Wednesday told Parliament an appeal would have to be made within 30 days of the publication of the health ombudsman’s report on February 1 and that it would be heard by a three-member tribunal headed by a retired judge.
Selebano’s lawyer, who asked not to be named, confirmed his client would appeal.
Health ombudsman Malegapuru Makgoba, who was asked by the minister to investigate the patients’ deaths, told MPs that he was still receiving reports of deaths and the final figure was likely to be higher than 100.
Makgoba said 80% of the deaths occurred among five of the 27 NGOs that received the patients. None of the NGOs had legal licences and none were equipped with the requisite staff, training or infrastructure to care for the patients placed in their care. The decision to place state mental patients in such an environment was reckless and negligent, he said. “There was a litany of human rights abuses,” he told a joint sitting of parliament’s portfolio committee on health and the select committee on social services.
The minister said he had discussed readmitting patients to Life Esidimeni facilities with Life Healthcare CEO Andre Meyer.
The group’s healthcare services operations executive, Nilesh Patel, said that a proposal had been submitted to the health minister in which 765 patients currently housed at NGOs would be readmitted to Life Esidimeni facilities over an eight-week period.
Makgoba’s report shows many of the patients who died at the hands of the NGOs had spent decades in the care of Esidimeni and were discharged in a stable but frail condition: some died within a matter of days after their transfer. It appears the move was driven, at least in part, by an attempt to minimise costs.
The Gauteng health department paid Life Esidimeni R320 per patient per day, but just R100 per patient per day to NGOs.