The SA Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) has appealed to the Treasury for a bigger budget, warning that it cannot do its job effectively unless key vacancies are filled, reports BusinessLIVE.
SAHPRA’s allocation for this financial year has been cut and is 8% less than last year's, falling from R159m in 2020-2021 to R146m in 2021-2022. The Treasury’s projected allocation increases slightly in the next two years, to R150m in 2022-2023 and R153m in 2023-2024, but does not recover to 2020-2021 levels.
Its total budget for 2021-2022 is R358m, of which R185m has been set aside for its compensation bill. ‘We are understaffed, and it is having an impact on the speed and efficacy with which we are able to make regulatory decisions,’ SAHPRA CEO Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela told MPs yesterday.
‘The regulatory authority needs just under 500 (personnel) and at the moment we have 290. We really are quite stretched,’ she said. Significant investments were also required to continue digitising SAHPRA’s processes, she said.