‘No food shortages in Gauteng hospitals’

The Gauteng health department faced ‘some administrative challenges” but that did not affect food supply to state hospitals, an official said on Thursday.

‘There are some administrative challenges but not of a nature where patients are not supplied with food, so it is not correct to say there are food shortages … patients are eating as normal,” Gauteng health spokesperson JP Louw said.

He was responding to statements by the Democratic Alliance (DA) on Wednesday that failure by the Gauteng Shared Services Centre (GSSC) to pay service providers forced them to withhold delivering goods to hospitals.

DA spokesperson Jack Bloom said the backlog in payments amounted to more than R10-million and was exacerbated by the fact that the department had run out of money before the end of its financial year on March 31.

‘Patients at the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital have not had fish or chicken for about three months, receiving mostly pap and a bit of meat when available,” said Bloom.

‘I have spoken to many suppliers who all complain of complex paperwork and inefficiency that delay payments … all payments were suspended from March 6 and will only resume from next month.”

But Louw refuted these claims, saying the administrative problems were caused by suppliers who provided hospitals with more food than what had been ordered.

‘You get situations where people get an order to deliver 20 apples to a hospital but when they get to the hospital, the hospital tells them they want 40 apples, so this tends to cause delay and frustration because the GSSC can’t pay for more than what suppliers have been approved to give,” Louw said.

He said nearing the end of the financial year was also adding to their problems as ‘more requests were coming through”.

‘That tends to pressure the system,” he said.

On Wednesday GSSC spokesperson Khusela Sangoni said Bloom’s allegations were nothing but cheap politicking.

‘[Bloom] has become a desperate media-hungry opportunist who will stop at nothing including peddling rumour as gospel without verifying facts just to discredit government,” Sangoni said. — Sapa