Spending on North West health projects frozen
The North West health department’s turnaround team has put all new infrastructure spending projects on hold as it seeks to stabilise its finances, parliament heard on Wednesday.
The struggling department was placed under national administration by the cabinet in terms of Section 100 (b) of the constitution in April, following a protracted strike and violent protests aimed at removing premier Supra Mahumapelo.
The protests closed clinics and hospitals and led to extensive medicine shortages. The North West was identified by the auditor-general as a hotbed of maladministration under former president Jacob Zuma, who was closely allied to Mahumapelo.
The decision by the national government to take control of the province has helped President Cyril Ramaphosa cement his control of SA and given weight to his pledge to rid the country of corruption.
The department’s administrator, Jeanette Hunter, and her team painted a picture of a poorly managed department that had run out of cash by September 2017, midway through the 2017/2018 spending cycle. It began the 2018/2019 fiscal year on April 1 owing suppliers close to R1bn. The department’s total budget is R11bn.
Inadequately managed infrastructure projects were the key contributors to the accruals, said the department’s Johan de Klerk, where there had been overspending on some projects and others had been completed sooner than expected, putting immense strain on the budget.
“We postponed whatever we could, but we are in deep trouble again this year,” he said.
In the face of continued industrial action and labour relations that she described as “fragile”, Hunter was at pains to emphasise the dedication of many health-care professionals who continued to serve patients under trying conditions and the efforts her team was making to ensure they received outstanding overtime pay.
Government rules limit overtime to 30% of a person’s salary, but many personnel had exceeded this limit in shortstaffed hospitals and clinics, said Hunter. “If we were to stick with that, we would have wards that were unstaffed at night.”
Staff felt overwhelmed by the demands placed upon them because so many posts stood empty. “No vacancies had been filled for the four years prior to the [section 100] intervention,” she said.
“We cannot squeeze the health department any further.”
The North West health department had 4,220 vacancies, she said, but there was only enough money to fill about half of them.