Ann Eveleth
ESTCOURT health officials are investigating the circumstances behind the bizarre overnight consignment of large quantities of meat, eggs, milk and other perishable foodstuffs destined for Estcourt Hospital to a local mortuary this week.
Regional health services director Thoko Mtshali visited the hospital on Wednesday to open the investigation. She said staff were disgusted when they followed up an anonymous tip-off and discovered “a bakkie- load” of food stacked metres away from refrigerated corpses.
“The food was put there on the evening of the 20th. In the morning the management received an anonymous call to go to the mortuary. When they arrived they discovered the food,” said Mtshali.
Mtshali said the food had to be incinerated as the proximity to human corpses held the possibility of disease contamination: “It is just not a usual place to store food. I think it was just an irresponsible decision,” she said.
Mtshali confirmed the food had been supplied by the hospital’s caterers, Kagiso Khulani Supervision Food Services (KKSFS), but could not say whether action would be taken against the company until investigations are completed.
KKSFS KwaZulu-Natal managing director Mike Davies said the decision to store the food at the morgue had been made by “a junior member of staff acting on her own initiative. She moved some food out of the way during fumigation for cockroaches at our normal facilities. She stored it in the mortuary because it was the only refrigeration available in the vicinity”.
Davies said the staff member responsible had been suspended pending an inquiry, but added that “It was only a couple of hours and only a couple hundred rand worth of chicken and vegetables – a small portion of the food we supply to the entire hospital”.
He said the company was “the biggest catering company in the country”. Kagiso Trust and Khulani Investments had recently acquired a majority shareholding in the company, formerly known as Supervision Food Services, as part of its black empowerment drive.