The Democratic Alliance (DA) gathered outside the Northern Cape Health Department today to protest against deeply entrenched corruption that has largely paralysed health care services across the province.

Over the past two decades, the health department has increasingly been used as a cash cow for connected individuals and there have been little to no consequences for those who have enriched themselves with money intended to save the lives of the Northern Cape’s most sick and vulnerable people.

This ranges from corruption relating to the new mental hospital, for which the former MEC of Roads and Public Works was recently arrested, twenty-years later, to the cases of Intaka and Wataka, that also saw John Block arrested along with Uruguay-born tycoon Gaston Savoi and others like the Health’s current Chief Financial Officer, Mr Daniel Gaborone, for the questionable purchase of water purifiers, oxygen machines and dialysis machines, to the arrest of the former Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Hospital CEO, Gordon Moncho, on charges of tender fraud relating to construction contracts.

There is also the ongoing case in which former Health HOD, Steven Jonkers, who is alleged to have irregularly awarded a security tender, and who now serves in the Office of the Premier.

Most recently, we have been presented with the escalating scandal of Dr Dion Theys, who despite numerous arrests for alleged Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) fraud and even a criminal conviction for violating the Public Finance Management Act in respect of entering into irregular leases for nursing accommodation, was promoted to acting HOD, then HOD, with a five-year fixed term contract. Only after his third PPE arrest, was he shifted into his former position of medical director but he remains on the job and the payroll of the department.

The Chief Financial Officer, Mr Daniel Gaborone, who was arrested alongside Theys on the PPE charges, got a lateral transfer to head up the finances of another department.

The practise of rewarding those who steal from the sick,and retaining them within the health system, or provincial government, at all costs, must come to an abrupt end.

The cost of corruption on health care has been devastating. Irregular expenditure in the provincial health department stands at a massive R9, 370 billion. This wasted money could have been much better used by appointing additional nurses and doctors and procuring much needed equipment. The Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Hospital could have appointed more theatre nurses to operationalize all nine theatres as opposed to the four currently in use. This would help tackle the rapidly growing surgery backlog that stands at 6 373. Additional ambulances and Emergency Medical Service practitioners could have been appointed to operationalise more ambulances and patient transporters and do away with single-person crews. Pharmaceutical stock-outs caused by cash flow constraints could have been prevented and the massive backlogs of assistive devices like spectacles, hearing aids and wheelchairs, could have been cleared.

Today, the DA has demanded that the MEC of Health, Maruping Lekwene must stop harboring criminals and root out corruption.

We also called on Lekwene to suspend the many officials implicated in corruption, to take decisive disciplinary action against Mr Gaborone, who has been fingered in a number of criminal cases, and to immediately fire Dr Theys, given that he has already has one guilty conviction, with the possibility of more to follow.

Health care belongs to all and we must not allow it to be captured by those who stay in the system to protect their own interest at the expense of other people’s lives.

 

Issued by Dr Isak Fritz, MPL - DA Northern Cape Premier Candidate