The Gauteng Department of Health has not vetted nearly 40 000 staff who work with children, raising serious concerns about child safety and patient protection across the province’s public health system, according to a DA statement published on Polity.
The party called for the department to urgently implement mandatory National Register for Sex Offenders (NRSO) and National Child Protection Register (NCPR) checks for all staff working with children, audit all child-facing posts, disclose how many employees have never been screened, set a clear compliance timeline, and publicly report on corrective action.
The statement, issued by DA Gauteng spokesperson for education Michael Waters, warned that sick children in hospitals, toddlers in clinic waiting rooms, and teenagers receiving school health services, all “rely on a system that has not done the most basic checks to protect them from potential predators”.
The information and statistics were disclosed by Gauteng Health MEC Faith Mazibuko in a written reply to the DA's question in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature (GPL).
The department confirmed it employs 39 653 people in “critical posts”, many of whom may have direct or indirect contact with children in hospitals, clinics, school health programmes, community outreach services, and other healthcare environments involving minors.
“Yet,” said the DA, “it admits it does not conduct routine vetting of all employees against the two critical registers as part of its standard employment processes.”
The department failed to apply legally required child protection checks, “meaning thousands of hospital staff working around children were never screened against the NRSO and NCPR”.
Even more alarming, added the statement, is the department’s assertion that “it will create a system to ensure all staff hired to work with children are screened in line with relevant laws. . . an admission that it lacks an adequate system that is compliant with the safeguards to protect children”.
The DA said it was unacceptable that one of the country’s largest provincial departments was riding slipshod over key child protection laws, including the Children’s Act and Sexual Offences Act.
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