The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health is no stranger to chaos. Its history is replete with tales of corruption, maladministra-tion, a lack of consistent leadership, costly litigation due to staff negligence, collapsing infrastructure and poor service delivery.
Many examples of such stories can be found on Noseweek’s website, www.noseweek.co.za.
A noticeably large swath of the troubles took place under the former MEC for Health, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo, now an MP tasked with the responsibility of ushering the controversial National Health Insurance Bill through Parliament.
His record as MEC in KwaZulu-Natal should worry most South Africans. It is littered with poor financial audits, accusations of nepotism, poor handling of the disaster in the oncology department and documentary evidence that showed clear political interference in a Health Care Risk Waste (HCRW) services contract.
However, Dhlomo is a member of the ANC’s Teflon Club and instead of being sanctioned, he was promoted to the portfolio chairperson of Health after the May 2019 general election.
Just a month after his departure to Cape Town the department’s Supply Chain Management Unit was disbanded due to corruption and placed under the control of the provincial Treasury.
But it is his last major act as KZN Health MEC for which he is now being dragged to court and which is expected to expose, yet again, how poorly the department was led.
The matter to be argued is simple: did the department commit a crime in order to fix another crime that was a result of its inability to carry out its duties – which in a sense is also crime?
Dhlomo had wanted to remove Compass Medical Waste, the Westville company that had run the provincial government’s medical waste contract since 2000.
This story is from the February 2020 edition of Noseweek.
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This story is from the February 2020 edition of Noseweek.
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