The Gauteng Provincial Government has noted with interest and a certain level of concern the manner in which the statement by national cabinet was interpreted in the public arena.
It is important to note that in as far as our province is concerned, the national Treasury has welcomed our intervention in the Department of Health and Social Development including our financial management approach. Consequently, I will be signing an agreement with the Minister of Health and the Minister of Finance to address financial management challenges in the Department.
That is the beginning and the end of national government’s engagement in our province. We have not been placed under administration and we have not acted against any legal or political mandate.
Our challenges in the financial management and cash flow of the Department of Health and Social Development have been well documented. We as the provincial government went public and acknowledged that certain things are not going as smooth as they are supposed to be. We said it as far back as the opening of the legislature in February and recently when we tabled our political report.
It is no secret that the Health arm of the department has been plagued by financial management and procurement issues as far back as 2005. As a pro-active administration that is concerned with clean governance, we took a number of corrective steps to remedy the situation – approaching national Treasury for guidance being one of them.
But before then, we had already taken a number of steps to steer the situation in the right direction.
Among some of them is to decentralise the procurement of certain essential goods and services and give hospital CEOs powers to control some of their budgets from the hospital level. In that way, the turnaround time will be greatly improved as opposed to the current situation where suppliers’ invoices are submitted at hospitals, then sent to the department and then finally get to the Gauteng Shared Services Centre (GSSC) to be paid.
There have also been a number of interventions to tackle the problems of over-expenditure and accruals, such as reprioritisation and cost-cutting exercises in the department.
Specific interventions to improve the situation include:
- Allocation of additional funds during the 2011/12 adjustment budget to clear accruals that have accumulated from previous financial years;Reprioritisation of funds from the personnel budget towards payments for the required goods and services within the department;
- Reprioritisation of funds from other provincial departments to the Department of Health to ensure payment of required goods and services over the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF);
- Improving revenue collection with a focus on collecting debt owed to Health by other stakeholders like the SAPS, Correctional Services and other provinces;
The province has formed a dedicated team comprising the Office of the Premier and the Department of Finance that will work jointly with the Department of Health and four (4) tertiary hospitals to ensure that these hospitals are able to render services to the public. The team will focus on among others:
- Reviewing the capacity of the head office and tertiary hospitals to deliver on their mandate;
- Managing contracts to ensure that the department does not over-commit its finances and the existing contract enable the department to deliver on its mandate;
- Local procurement of goods and equipment to reduce delays;
- Other cost drivers include strengthening Primary Health Care (PHC). The positive results are that we have 24 more Community Health Centres (CHC) that has extended their hours of operation to 24 hours in the current financial year. We now have 90 clinics with extended hours of operation and that comes at a cost.
The implementation of Occupation-Specific Dispensation (OSD) for health professionals should also not be underplayed as it had a serious effect on our budgets.
We believe that with these new measures in place, we will turn around the tide and continue to provide a better healthcare for all people of Gauteng.
For more information contact:
Simon Zwane (Department of Health Social Development Spokesperson)
Cell: 082 551 9892
John Sukazi (Department of Finance Spokesperson)
Cell: 083 772 4885
