Provincial health departments in the nine provinces of the country are in a state of paralysis due to corruption and neglect, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Tuesday.
”A DA analysis of the nine provincial health departments reveals a pattern of neglect, mismanagement and blatant corruption, which is having plainly visible consequences for the delivery of health services,” DA health spokesperson Gareth Morgan said at a media briefing in Cape Town on Tuesday.
His statements were rejected by the national Health Department on Tuesday, which said many of the allegations were ”grossly misrepresented”.
Morgan alluded to the fact that last year three of the provinces received qualified reports while the rest failed to get a clean report from the Auditor General, as evidence of the extent of the paralysis.
”Three reports were qualified, and in two cases — the Northern Cape and Eastern Cape — the Auditor General issued a disclaimer because these departments’ finances were in too much of a state of disorder to be able to reach any conclusions,” he said.
Other accusations that Morgan levelled against the departments include the ignoring of tender regulations, the concealing of critical documents and fraudulent conduct by officials.
He urged the national Department of Health to implement measures to ensure there is compliance in provincial departments.
”Only the implementation of more stringent measures by the government at national level to enforce compliance will have any impact on this untenable situation,” Morgan said.
While the national Department of Health on Tuesday admitted there could be problems in its provincial departments, it rejected the DA’s assertion that these amounted to a state of paralysis.
”There might be some administrative difficulties that some of the provincial departments have to resolve but these do not add up to widespread corruption and neglect as presented by the DA,” said department spokesperson Sibani Mngadi.
Individual provinces would respond to specific allegations levelled against them because many of these allegations were grossly misrepresented, Mngadi said, adding that the department did not tolerate corruption.
”In cases of corruption, the Department of Health is of the firm view that those should be investigated and the law should take its course,” he said. — Sapa