Lisa Isaacs
PREMIER Helen Zille and Mayor Patricia de Lille have apologised to the Manenberg community for not including them in the announcement of development plans for the area.
The Manenberg community has slammed the sale of the GF Jooste Hospital site, saying they were not consulted after it was announced this month to the media that the site had been sold to the City to use as a law enforcement training facility.
Officials said there was a plan to build a new regional hospital for the area, but they could not propose a budget and still had to identify a site.
The Manenberg steering committee, which represents the Manenberg community in consultations with the city and province, have been vocal on their exclusion from the process and met with Zille and De Lille to discuss their concerns this week.
De Lille’s spokesperson Pierrinne Leukes said: “Both the mayor and the premier apologised for not inviting the community to the press conference.”
Yesterday Roegshanda Pascoe, of the Manenberg Safety Forum and a member of the steering committee, said De Lille and Zille had explained to the committee that GF Jooste had to be sold to the city to prevent further vandalism of the hospital which has been stripped by criminals.
Leukes said securing the building was not working because security services absconded due to the high levels of danger. “Therefore, an emergency decision needed to be taken by government in order to save what was left of the building,” she said.
Next week the community, De Lille and Zille were meant to sign a Memorandum of Understanding, she added.
Zille’s spokesperson Michael Mpofu however said Zille had only apologised to the steering committee about the fact that they were not at the press conference.
“It was agreed that a joint briefing would be held in the near future,” Mpofu said.
Mpofu admitted that there was an urgent need to secure the site, but also a need to make Manenberg a safer place.
Yesterday at a press briefing, Cosatu provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich slammed the city for a lack of consultation with the community.
“The province closed down GF Jooste Hospital to do an upgrade, yet now they claim the area needs a bigger hospital that they are going to build.
“The GF Jooste could have been providing medical services to the surrounding community still, if the province had planned better,” he said.