Aid for KZN’s ailing health department
PROVINCIAL TREASURY STEPS IN
In what could be perceived as a lack of confidence in the leadership abilities of KwaZulu-Natal’s health MEC, provincial treasury yesterday took over administration of procurement at the failing health department.
“Provincial treasury will be making a Section 18 intervention in terms of the Public Finance Management Act to temporarily control the supply chain management function in the [provincial health] department until such time as the necessary financial management controls are in place,” said KwaZulu-Natal Premier Willies Mchunu.
Mchunu said he gave serious consideration to the calls to fire provincial health MEC, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo, but decided that he should not be axed.
“In my assessment, you can’t lay the blame solely on him,” he said.
Mchunu was speaking to journalists at the KwaZulu-Natal legislature yesterday afternoon following a tense sitting that saw opposition parties calling for Dhlomo’s head.
Dhlomo and MEC for finance, Belinda Scott, had earlier briefed legislature about the state of the province’s health department. They joined Mchunu at the press briefing.
Mchunu said treasury’s intervention would involve taking stock of all tenders, many of which were running on a monthto-month basis. These would be converted to “proper contracts”, according to Mchunu.
“Government has set timelines – the contract register will be finalised by the end of August this year and all tender backlogs should have been dealt with by no later than January 2018. It is planned for all period contracts to be finalised by May 2019,” he said.
Dhlomo and his department were singled out in a South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) report published last week as having “violated the rights of oncology patients at the Addington and Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central hospitals to have access to healthcare as a result of their failure to apply with applicable norms and standards set out in legislation and policies”.
“In line with the information secured during its investigation of the complaint, it appears there has been conspicuous failure to provide adequate oncology services in the KZN province for a considerable time,” according to the report.
The report found that the measures the provincial health department told the SAHRC it would put in place to end the crisis were “inadequate and unacceptable”. – ANA