A Mafia-like cartel in Johannesburg is campaigning relentlessly to undermine emergency services in the city, according to city manager Pascal Moloi. He said the cartel was so effective that it had caused a mass exodus of trained emergency personnel.
It had also drained departmental resources by exploiting disciplinary rules to ensure that key personnel suspended while being investigated for alleged corruption continued to draw salaries for almost two years.
”We were alarmed at how the services were run at the pleasure of a small core of family members,” said Moloi. ”You would find the wife of the chief of a base station is also the sister of a head of the department, while the kin held key departmental positions or were owners of garages that monopolised the fuelling or repairs of ambulances and fire trucks,” he said.
Moloi said the new city administration tried to disrupt the cartel by transferring various Emergency Management Services (EMS) chiefs. But the cartel had hit back by causing a mass exodus of staff and also by securing lucrative jobs in the private sector or overseas for some of the city’s finest emergency personnel, who had been trained by the government at its own expense.
Moloi blames the cartel for the shortage of emergency vehicles. There are only three emergency response cars and 24 rickety ambulances available to serve the 2,8-million inhabitants of Johannesburg. The ambulances are reduced by about half in the rainy season because the roofs of some of the vehicles leak.
The city needs at least 10 response cars and 56 ambulances. Response vehicles are sedans that should carry two trained personnel. He said the city could not acquire new ambulances because of an interdict in 2000 barring the provincial government from awarding a winning tender for the supply of ambulances. It could not be verified whether this decision was influenced by the cartel.
Gauteng director of health Audrey Gule said the provincial government was trying to bypass the court interdict so that the urgently needed ambulances could be supplied to the city. Already five new ambulances have been delivered in what could be considered contempt of court.
The government is bound by law to provide emergency services but has been unable to do so because of the cartel’s effectiveness and the massive financial losses caused to the service.
To escape the situation, the government shifted responsibility for emergency management to the city through a Memorandum of Agreement that stated the province would supply all the ambulances and subsidise the salaries of emergency personnel by 50%.
Detailing the woes of EMS, operations chief David Tembe said that to tackle the shortage of ambulances, the city occasionally uses fire trucks to transport medics from one of their 28 bases to the scene of an emergency. ”I will use anything to respond to an emergency — even a bicycle,” he said.
Tembe added that the city has an 800-strong firefighting and ambulance crew. It needs 600 more staff to replace those who have left. To make up for the shortage of firefighters, ambulance personnel have been made to undergo part-time training as firefighters. The firefighters, in turn, are being given basic medical training.
An internal document in the possession of the Mail & Guardian indicates that understaffing and shortage of equipment has forced EMS to table controversial plans to downgrade emergency services. As part of the downgrading process, the Gauteng provincial government has informally increased the minimum response time by paramedics for high-priority emergencies from the internationally acceptable eight minutes to 15 minutes. It has also been proposed that half the 28 base centres be shut down and the construction of six new stations be suspended.
Fifty of the technologically sophisticated fire trucks acquired at considerable expense from FleetAfrica will remain dormant. Eighteen of the fire trucks, which cost a R1-million each, will have to be returned, at a loss, to the city.
Democratic Alliance spokes-persons Mike Mariotti and Darren Bergman condemned the planned downgrading and called for quick and decisive action to ensure that emergency services conform to international norms and standards. ”The state of EMS is depressing, more so because the most affected are the poor communities.
”The privileged class can afford private service,” said Bergman.