Delays in paying service providers to maintain health facilities in Gauteng have been acknowledged by a government official, citing budget constraints.
Bawinile Malope of the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development, which is tasked with implementing the maintenance of health facilities in the province, made a presentation to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) on Monday.
The commission works with the Departments of Health, Infrastructure Development and Finance as part of its oversight of the health system.
Malope said that maintenance requirements in healthcare facilities are over budget and they are running a deficit of R1.2 billion to deal with infrastructure issues.
“In some hospitals we have service providers, who refuse to perform their services because they have not been paid. Some payments have been outstanding since September,” Malope told the commission.
She said most of her service providers provided specialty services such as elevator and generator maintenance.
Regarding the beginning of this one year when elevators weren’t working and couldn’t be repaired, she said, “In some hospitals we had to pull our service provider out completely for non-payment.”
Malope talked about stress load shedding added hospitals and clinics and said that just Steve Biko and George Mukhari’s hospitals are exempt from Eskom’s forced power outages.
“Since late May, generators in hospitals have been struggling to maintain an end to the steady cuts. We’ve seen a lot of equipment failures,” she said.
The commitment continues.
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