Premier Mabuza
gets overview of health situation in Mpumalanga
By BRIAN
KAJENGO
Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza on Monday, 23 June 2014
spent more than five hours interacting with the chief executive officers of the
provincial hospitals in an effort to understand and get a clear overview of the
entire health system.
After intensive discussions, the Premier conceded that
indeed the situation at the hospitals was extremely bad and he has since called
for a bold commitment from the chief executive officers to work hand-in-hand
with him and the curator in changing the situation around immediately.
Mabuza received verbal reports from chief executive officers
of all 33 provincial hospitals stating their challenges, which painted a
negative picture in terms of the infrastructure, human resources, leadership
and contract management in the health system.
The chief executive officers told the Premier that generally
all hospitals had infrastructure problems, as some buildings were ageing and
dilapidated. The infrastructure problems ranged from dysfunctional broilers and
laundry machines to lack of life saving equipment.
While others complained about lack of enough accommodation
for patients, some told the Premier about the leaking roofs and lack of proper
theatre tables.
They said their budgets were not sufficient for their
operations, grocery was running dry and some could not even pay their
suppliers. They said linen had to be cleaned at faraway hospitals that had such
equipment.
Many of the chief executive officers were employed on acting
capacity and the workmanship at the hospitals was also terrible. Some hospitals
had serious water shortages and at some hospitals patient safety was
compromised, as there was lack of proper fencing.
In some instances, employees’ compensation had been
exhausted due to staff shortages, as people worked overtime continuously. Some
chief financial officers complained about the lack of transport for their
referred patients.
“We now have a general feel of the situation. Indeed it is
bad with lots of problems. We need a commitment from this leadership to work
with us in turning the situation around.
“We are going to rework their entire budget structures. We
must further intervene with immediate effect in terms of infrastructure. Each
and every hospital must be given a minimum number of people in order to be
functional.
“As the provincial government, we will work on some certain
powers which we think should be delegated to the chief executive officers,
however they must not abuse them. We want to ensure that they get certain
delegations and they must be able to handle the finances,” said Mabuza.
He explained that before such powers were delegated to the
chief executive officers, the provincial government would ensure that systems
at the hospitals were strengthened. The Premier further urged the chief
executive officers to ensure that health system was not collapsing by managing
the hospitals as expected.
He said the good performing chief executive officers should
be incentivized in order to motivate them.
“We cannot always be regarded as a bad province when it
comes to the matters of health. We have men and women who are able to turn
things around here. We must not allow the challenges to overcome us.
“We cannot afford to destroy the skill and talent we have in
these men and women, we must protect our hard working individuals because they
are our resource for our government.
“We need to treat each other as a family, we must love our
beautiful province and its people, in that way, we will definitely go an extra
mile in serving them with passion. There should be progress in the people’s
lives, otherwise if we cannot work, we must simply just go to the graves,” said
Mabuza.
He explained that he was going to change the tone and take stringent
actions in changing the situation in the health system, as it was the
government of the day that was regarded as failing the people.
No comments:
Post a Comment