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Safety concerns could mean closure of Gugulethu clinic

Gugulethu residents fear losing quality health-care services in the area as health workers threatened to leave due to safety concerns after a spate of robberies in local clinics, according to the Gugulethu Health Forum. A Cape Times report quotes the forum as saying there were about four robberies at the Gugulethu clinic and at the KTC Gugulethu Community Health Centre in recent months, the latest last week.

Police could only confirm this latest incident.

The report says workers at the clinic, between NY1 and NY3, were rattled when two robbers, one of them armed, struck the facility early on Wednesday, robbing staff members of two cellphones and a laptop, in the containers belonging to Sonke Gender Justice. Police spokesperson Botsotso George Mjiwu said an armed robbery case was opened for investigation and no one was injured.

Community Services and Health Mayco member Zahid Badroodien said that following this latest incident additional security guards had been deployed at the clinic. “The security guards didn’t witness the incident, as the robbers targeted the Sonke Gender Justice facility from where the male clinic operates, and not the main clinic.”

Badroodien said in the report that facilities were short-staffed as staff who experienced trauma had to take time off work, with vacancies in some areas that were plagued by crime or gang violence more difficult to fill.

Gugulethu Health Forum chair Thembile Mangwane said unarmed additional security guards would not prevent the break-ins and robberies at local health facilities. “We demand that at least one security guard, even if it’s the supervisor, be armed because they get beaten and pushed around. We also call for the mobile police station that was handed over to KTC Day Hospital in 2017 and removed last year to be brought back,” Mangwane said.

In 2017, the report said Police Deputy Minister Bongani Mkongi handed over the mobile police station inside the day hospital after residents and health workers protested at the high rate of crime, lack of safety in the vicinity and a robbery, where someone was killed.

[link url="https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/news/health-clinic-security-fears-over-spate-of-robberies-23648049"]Cape Times report[/link]

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