House Chair, the DA objects to the Health budget due to the failure of the department to provide adequate and accessible health care to all South Africans, according everyone dignity and respect. More funding should also be made available for primary health care. According to the Auditor-General, the vacancy rate is 31% which, in turn, negatively impacts upon service delivery.
We are in agreement with the report entitled Vacancies and the impact on service delivery produced by the Auditor-General, as we too have witnessed the following at first hand during our visits to the provinces.
There are shortages of specialists, which affect the admission of patients, and there is a lack of appropriate specialist care; the shortage of staff results in overworked and demoralised personnel; a lack of staff in the infrastructure unit resulted in projects not being finalised on time; in addition, poor workmanship was not detected early thereby resulting in unnecessary expenditure for corrective measures; newly built facilities are not being utilised due to a shortage of staff and equipment; a human resource plan is not in place as per the requirement of the Public Service regulation; not all senior managers signed performance agreements; and the lack of ambulances and personnel in emergency medical services has a huge impact on the national norm for response times.
The DA urges the Minister to come up with a plan of how he is going to overcome the crises facing the provincial Departments of Health. Thank you.