NGO owner admits she pocketed grant money after patients died
DOROTHY Franks – who ran the Anchor non-government organisation‚ where at least five Life Esidimeni patients died – has admitted she drew social grant money from the accounts of deceased patients.
When asked by Judge Dikgang Moseneke, who is overseeing the Life Esidimeni arbitration hearings, if she drew grants from the dead‚ Franks became silent for a while and eventually said: “Yes‚ judge.” Later‚ she whispered: “I couldn’t help it.” She had earlier told the hearing that after her NGO in Cullinan, outside Pretoria, had been shut and she had been chased off the premises‚ she drew grants for five months of about R1 500 each from 29 patients who were no longer in her care. She also earned R600 000 from the Gauteng health department after the NGO was shut in October last year.
Under cross-examination‚ Franks was pressured as to why she took about 72 patients into her care when she did not have experience with mentally ill patients‚ only had a licence to look after children with intellectual disabilities and had to mix men and women in the same crowded ward.
She said she had taken in patients under pressure from then Gauteng Health MEC Qedani Mahlangu and former provincial health director Dr Makgoba Manamela.
Section 27 Advocate Nikki Stein suggested she took patients for the money.
“You didn’t resist pressure from Dr Manamela and Mahlangu because you wanted the money?” she said. Franks responded‚ “Yes”. She had been promised R3 490 a patient a month by Manamela.
Other NGO owners have not given clear answers why they took patients in‚ even though they did not have staff‚ experience or knowledge about mental health care. Franks is the first to concede under oath that she did it for the money.
She admitted the Anchor had only six toilets, with no seats, for about 72 patients.
Franks said there were no doctors and that 30 of the patients did not have IDs, so she struggled to get them hospital care.
Three of five patients who died in her care died of pneumonia.