Siyabonga Sithole
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has slammed the Gauteng department of health for its failure to spend over R2.6 billion of its allocated budget for 2021/2022 while some of the big hospitals continue to face shortages in supplies, equipment and infrastructural problems.
According to the DA's shadow minister of health, Dennis Bloem, this failure to utilise its budget is despite the provincial department' failure in servicing and filling empty posts and fixing some of its decrepit hospitals such as Leratong, Weskoppies , Sebokeng, and Jubilee Hospitals.
Bloem says this unsettling information was revealed last week to the Finance Committee in the Gauteng Legislature.
"According to the presentation by Gauteng Treasury, R365 million meant for compensation of employees was unspent “as a result of not filling a number of vacancies that were provided for”, as well as under performance in the award of bursaries for training," the DA statement reads.
This week, it was revealed that Bara Hospital was facing a shortage of bed linen which had affected the ability for the hospital to perform surgical operations, while employees at Leratong complained of lack of equipment and medical supplies as well as stationery and was operating without a cachement area to accept patients.
It is then surprising that the department failed to spend R480 million earmarked for infrastructure , which resulted in Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) refurbishment not being done at the Leratong, Sebokeng, Weskoppies and Jubilee hospitals.
As if that was not enough, the DA says the department was unable to make use of R1.6 billion of conditional grant money which remained unspent due to non-filling of posts, claims not submitted, and unpaid invoices for the procurement of equipment.
Furthermore, there was also R658 million unauthorised expenditure, and R2.57 billion is being surrendered back to Treasury.
Suppliers who rely on the government to pay them on time were not spared as by end of March this year, only 24% of health suppliers were paid within the legally required 30 days, with 22 000 suppliers owed R2.4 billion, including 5 580 companies that are owed R733 million for more than 120 days.
The DA further noted that the accrued budget commitment at the end of the 2021/22 financial year is an astounding R8.86 billion which will have to be paid out of this year’s budget.
Bloem said this situation does not bode well for the millions of Gauteng residents who rely on public health for their medical needs as well as suppliers who should be paid what is due to them.
"The big victims of this financial disaster are suffering patients, overworked medics and unpaid suppliers. The only glimmer of hope is that the department recently appointed a permanent head of department and a new chief financial official after these posts were vacant for more than a year.
They have a huge task to fix the deep rot which hurts so many vulnerable people who depend on public health services in Gauteng," Bloem said.