The Democratic Alliance (DA) has learned with shock that the Mpumalanga Department of Health has not budgeted for security in health facilities. We are concern that this could compromise the safety of healthcare professionals and patients.
According to the department’s budget document for 2024/2025 financial year, MEC Sasekani Manzini and the Head of Department (HOD), Dr Lucus Ndhlovu, planned to budget for the security measures, however, due to the decline in the programme baseline, they were constrained to budget for security measures.
They basically failed to budget for any security measures such as installation of security systems, digital security, or the appointment of security officers and risk managers in the districts or hospitals due to budgetary constraints.
It is more concerning that MEC Manzini and Dr Ndhlovu took this decision after several security risks have taken place in the past year, with the most recent being just last week, where criminals targeted various healthcare facilities and professionals.
In 2019, former Premier Refilwe Mtsweni–Tsipane made a commitment to install security cameras and turnstiles in all healthcare facilities, and five years later, noting has been done.
The DA has written to MEC Manzini to ask that together with the HOD, they relook the health department budget to make provision for security measures to be installed in all healthcare facilities as a matter of urgency.
Healthcare professionals and facilities have constantly been seen as soft targets, hence the ongoing attacks by criminals.
Recently, the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA) took to the streets of eMalahleni protesting against the continuous attacks at healthcare facilities in the province, including the recent one at Klarinet Clinic where criminals held up security personnel at gunpoint, stole a car belonging to one of the nurses, as well as cell phones belonging to the staff. Because of this incident, the MEC resorted into stopping Klarinet Clinic from operating for 24 hours; instead of improving and beefing up weak security measures within our healthcare facilities.
MEC Manzini needs to take the lives of the healthcare professionals seriously as there will be no healthcare system without them.