The Gauteng hospitals’ security bill of R141-million is a rip-off, said the Democratic Alliance (DA) on Thursday.
Security costs for Gauteng’s 34 state hospitals had more than tripled in three years, from R42-million in 2006 to R141-million in the current financial year, the party said.
DA health spokesperson Jack Bloom said that, according to provincial health minister Qedani Mahlangu, the sharp increase was due to a security review and compliance with the higher rates for guards as regulated by the Private Security Industry Regulations Act.
”I think these security contracts are a giant rip-off. Even worse, many of the contracts are for three years, so it is difficult to renegotiate them,” Bloom said.
”While security needed to be tightened after various crime incidents at hospitals, we are not getting good value for the vast amount that we are spending,” he said.
He believed there were all sorts of anomalies, noting that at Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital the number of guards had gone down this year from 47 to 36.
This was despite security costs having more than doubled from R1,8-million to R3,9-million at that hospital.
”I fail to see why security at Charlotte Maxeke is R10-million more expensive than at Chris Hani Bara, which has more guards and is vastly more spread out with many buildings.
”I suspect that the three-year security contracts were deliberately inflated to pay for kick-backs,” Bloom said.
Bloom also said Mahlangu responded to the DA’s questions on the matter by saying that two meetings were held and that negotiations were already underway with service providers to scale down their costs.
”I suggest a forensic audit into the awarding of these contracts as it is well-known that there are corrupt players in this industry,” he said.
Although health spokesperson Mandla Sidu said he was aware of the DA’s concerns, he could not confirm the party’s claim on Mahlangu’s responses to its questions.
”I will have to go check on the response in the legislature before I can respond to that,” he said.
Sidu also said if there were kick-backs in the awarding of security contracts, ”then clearly that would have to be dealt with”.
”But I cannot say there were any [kick-backs] at this point because we need to first look into why the costs increased so much,” he said. — Sapa