Sixteen past four. Let's turn into that story about the security bills that have been budgeted for by the Karting Department of Health. The story is an excellent one. You freeda Hoe wrote it for Spotlight, printed on or reproduced on the Daily Maverick site. I recommend you read it. I'll read you the first sentence. In just two years, the Karting Health department spending on security has more than tripled.
Moving into the story, they project to spend two point five to four billion RAND on security contracts for the twenty five twenty six financial year. It's received a thumbs up from everybody who has to approve it. And she adds quote it comes as the department claims to lack the funds to fill vacancies, pay all suppliers on time, or continuing or continue fulfilling doctors overtime contracts. And then there are all the things missing at hospital's cancer equipment,
for example at Charlotte Matleke. To just mention one, Professor Alex Vondanhieffer joins us now from the vis School of Governance for his thoughts. Prof welcome and thanks for your time. You look very closely, for example at the abuse of spending at Tenbisa Hospital and other instances. What's actually going on here is this inefficiency or is there something darker?
Well? The history of expenditure an irregular expenditure within the Houting Department of Health suggests that we should look very very closely at this, this kind of escalation and to these kind of contractors and where what the contract goes to politically connected individuals and their families suggest that this isn't because it's needed for the Houting Department of Health.
So they've had a history of irregular expenditure which ranges from around about sort of four to five percent of the overall budget every year and it doesn't change, which means that they are appear to be immune in terms of the Public Finance Management Act to any kind of consequence management right, which suggests that this potentially will fall into that if properly investigated, but they don't appear to care.
They also have about five billion rands worth on average five billion rands worth of a cruels or basically unpaid debts during every year, so they're in financial difficulties always. They have massive irregular expenditure and they also don't spend all their budgets, such as on the cancer equipment which they were meant to spend on. So their priorities are all over the place and this doesn't appear to make sense.
So in youw Freida's articles, she quotes Jack Bloom, who's the DAS spokesperson on or not spokesperson but the pers shadow NEC I think is the correct title on health matters. And the example given that really jumped out for me. Tara Hospital. There's a new security contract fourteen million Rand a year. Last year it was four point two million round.
The argument justifying this is that they've now increased the number of gods from twenty one to forty six, this despite the department's own assessment saying they only needed five additional guards. And then they also talk about how Tarra Hospital actually can't use fifty of its one hundred and thirty seven beds because it doesn't have enough nurses. I get that hospitals need to be secure profit, but they're not in battle zones, are they?
No? You'd want so security assessments for hospitals will look at entrances, exits, you know, sort of perimeter protection and security, et cetera. So you should have a proper evaluation of your security requirements before you lay out funds, and you shouldn't be contracting with politically connected individuals, which they are doing in this particular case. And so all of that suggests that they might this might not be required in
a hospital like Tyra. It's a psychiatric hospital with yes, very sort of low volumes of patients overall, on very very large grounds, very easy establishment to manage from a security perspective, So it looks like massive overkill for that hospital. That's if any of these people actually pitch up to provide security. So it doesn't look as if this is based on any kind of proper security evaluation, and is clearly not the highest priority at the moment in the provincial Health department.
So what are those priorities? I mean, what is money not being spent on spent on profit? If you were to draw up a priority list, clearly this is not anywhere in the top ten, I would think, But what's your top three?
Well, first of all, I'd be trying to make savings within the department, but the priority would be making sure that the services, the critical posts are filled within the department, that the equipment is properly maintained, so that which is crucial in the case of cancer treatment, but not only cancer treatment, everything else, all the idiological equipment needs to be properly maintained and secured. So the whole the asset themselves needs to be managed. And then there's the actual
facilities themselves. A lot of that is just squandered. It doesn't it just seems to vaporize. It goes to the Department of Infrastructural Development kind of top slice to them
and then doesn't appear to end up in lifts. And then maintaining the physical facilities at all within these thirty six hospitals and clinics, so the facilities must be maintained, the staff must be there, the critical if if you've got some austerity that you're dealing with, you must still maintain your critical posts and so those become your priorities. Security is important, but you've also got to manage security efficiently. If you've got providers who are there because of dodgy tenders,
they're not going to secure your facilities. They're going to probably allow quite a lot of theft to occur within those facilities. So it's the random security con tracks don't protect the facilities, proper security arrangements do. It doesn't appear as if that's what this is about.
Alex funding here for joining us from the vis School of Governance