Moving psychiatric patients to NGOs cost 700 jobs
AFTER the Gauteng Department of Health ended its contract with three Life Healthcare Esidimeni facilities to look after about 1 400 psychiatric patients, 700 people lost their jobs.
Arbitration hearings are being held to find out why more than 118 psychiatric patients died in badly run non-government organisations and to give the families some closure and financial award.
The director of the project to move all psychiatric patients from their home‚ Levy Mosenogi‚ testified yesterday.
Despite months of warnings about the risks of moving severely sick people into NGOs‚ including five letters from the SA Psychiatric Society and family and civil society‚ MEC Qedani Mahlangu made the decision to move more than 1 400 patients from homes into illequipped NGOs.
Mosenogi testified that 700 caregivers such as nurses and doctors at Life Esidimeni facilities had lost their jobs.
He started the project to move patients in January and had to move 1 400 or so very ill patients out by March.
Part of the urgency was that the contract with Life Esidimeni had been cancelled by Mahlangu‚ he said.
He realised he would not meet the March deadline and got an extension to June.
Mosenogi also admitted that NGOs were not paid on time to look after and feed patients as there were no payment systems in place.
Former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke‚ the hearing judge‚ was at pains to find out why the Life Esidimeni contract was cancelled and why moving so many sick people was rushed.
Mosenogi did not have an answer.
But he said he was acting on instructions from Mahlangu and the then head of the Gauteng Department of Health‚ Barney Selebano.
He also said that the reason for ending the Life Esidimeni project was to cut costs and because the auditor-general had asked questions about the same contract with the same supplier every year.
The Gauteng Department of Health had used Life Esidimeni to look after severely ill psychiatric patients for 30 years.
“The auditor-general queried why we had one contract with the same supplier all the time.”
Mosenogi admitted no one had explained the 30-year contract with Life Esidimeni to the auditorgeneral to address his concerns.
Even though he was the project manager‚ Mosenogi learnt of the first reported 36 deaths through the media – which he could not explain.
He could not say when the project had ended. “It didn’t have an end point.” He also could not explain how doctors and staff in the project had decided which patients to move and which NGOS to place them in.
There were 532 patients who were so ill they had been at Life homes for more than 10 years‚ but he could not explain if these very ill people were properly matched to experienced NGOs. – TimesLIVE