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Eastern Cape MEC for social development, Nancy Sihlwayi, is under fire for insisting frail-care patients from two Port Elizabeth centres be moved to nongovernmental organisations (NGOs).
This in the wake of the 94 mentally disabled patients who died in Gauteng after being moved to NGOs.
Now, the DA in the province is calling for Premier Phumulo Masualle to fire “the uncaring MEC”.
“Premier Masualle must fire Sihlwayi for this uncaring and painful episode, as she has demonstrated that she is not only out of step with the needs of the frail-care patients, but is totally at odds with civil society and even her own party, and was prepared to take the Eastern Cape down the same road as Gauteng, which has just seen 94 patients die at the hands of the ANC government,” said Bobby Stevenson, leader of the DA in the Eastern Cape legislature.
“Sihlwayi has blundered twice on this matter. Firstly, the courts had to come to the rescue of the patients in December to prevent the closure, despite her being warned of this disastrous course of action.
"Secondly, the premier has had to overrule her decision to continue on this dangerous path as she refused to take the reality of the Gauteng deaths into account.”
He said the MEC on Wednesday – the same day the health ombudsman released a damning report regarding the Life Esidimeni crisis – was still insistent on closing the centres and sending patients to NGOs, despite the same approach having resulted in the Gauteng deaths.
Stevenson said the DA strongly opposed Sihlwayi and demanded that she change her stance, as it was of life-threatening proportions.
But Mzukisi Solani, speaking on behalf of Sihlwayi, defended the MEC, saying that the department had a two-year contract with Eastern Cape Frail Care, a private entity whose contract ended in December.
“When a contract ends in government, in terms of governance purposes, you start to go through a process of opening up applications so that everyone who is in a position of applying can do so. So, the department went through that process and that is what we are busy with currently.
“What happened in Gauteng obviously was of national concern. But people are mixing up issues. In this case, the department had no intention of pulling out people from the centres that they were in and throwing them into the street.
"Because there is an end of the contract, the service provider was told in June last year: ‘Your contract is coming to an end by December. We will be going out and looking for proposals from other people who might be interested in providing the service,’” he said.
Solani said the 239 frail-care patients in the Port Elizabeth-based centres, Lorraine and Algoa Frail Care, were being subsidised at R18 000 per person per month.
He said according to the Auditor-General, the contract between the department and the centres was done irregularly to begin with, and that the contract ending also afforded the department to correct the irregularity.
He said the DA was playing politics on a national crisis and they had interest in the matter because the two centres were in their constituencies.
“The recommendation that comes out of the discussion with the premier was that everything must be done above board because of what happened in Gauteng.
"Secondly, in order to avoid any loss of life, all the stakeholders, the MEC, families, people concerned and national ministers need to satisfy themselves that the process was above board before any movement was done, that is the latest position,” Solani said.
