Soweto residents can expect to wait an average of 31 minutes for an ambulance - far longer than the recommended 12-minute response time for an emergency callout.
This is according to the research presented in response to a question posed to the Gauteng Legislature by the DA's health representative, Jack Bloom, who wanted to know the average call times for ambulances in the province.
Jabulani's times featured dismally, prompting the DA councillor for the area, James Lorimer, to pay a visit to the station to determine the causes for lengthy delays and long waits for the people of Soweto.
"On an average day, only five ambulances serve the greater part of Soweto. That is when vehicles have not been lost due to mechanical breakdowns, caused by an ageing and overstretched fleet.
"This means too many people have to wait too long for medical treatment, with the corresponding risks to life and health," Lorimer said.
The area served by the station was also extremely large, meaning that the furthest parts were impossible to reach within the acceptable 12 minutes.
"Other problems include poor communications and occasional long waits to get hospitals to accept emergency patients.
"The shortage of ambulances means every day a fire truck with paramedics has to be sent out to attend to emergency calls, and then has to wait until an ambulance can arrive to ferry patients to hospital.
"This is a wasteful and inefficient use of resources," Lorimer said.
An Emergency Management Services source at the Jabulani EMS station, who asked not to be named, confirmed there were many problems at the station.
"There is a constant backlog of calls. You can come here and you will never see clear screens. There are constantly calls coming in, with the backlog sometimes being up to 50 calls," he said.
The source said that while Jabulani officially had 10 ambulances, there were generally only five in use, with others being in for repairs due to the huge mileage they do.
"I am surprised that they say the response-time average is 31 minutes. That must be on good days, because we often arrive two or more hours after the person called," he said.
"It is difficult because we get sent out, and you arrive believing that you got there in 10 minutes, only to have the people scream and shout at you because they called two hours ago.
"So the system is failing, and then it makes you feel like a failure because you are treated with complete disrespect by the people you want to help," he said.
He added that the extreme pressures of the job resulted in high absenteeism, which, in turn, led to staff shortages.
"We were led to believe that there are enough staff on duty, but then we were also told that this is because all leave and training has been cancelled over the World Cup period.
"So if they are well staffed at the moment, this is not necessarily normally the case," Lorimer said.
However, EMS spokesman Percy Morokane denied there were overly long waiting times for ambulances.
"Over the past six months there has been a consistent improvement in response time by the EMS, as well as an increase in the number of ambulances.
"About 80 percent of critical calls (priority one) are currently responded to (up from last year's 72 percent) within 12 minutes," Morokane said.
He added that the City of Joburg had bought 44 new ambulances in the past year.
"The EMS is committed to resolving any issues or deficiencies that might have a negative impact on its services," Morokane said.