Cape Town’s Health MEC has been grilled over a hospital in Manenberg that was decommissioned in 2013, with opposition MPs accusing the province of neglecting communities, while the delay to rebuild is attributed to a slashed budget, among other things.
ANC MPL Rachel Windvogel said the decade-long delay in rebuilding the hospital had deprived locals of access to healthcare services.
Exacerbating the issues was that it would apparently take another 10 years before the hospital was rebuilt, she said.
The provincial government had intended to rebuild the facility after it was decommissioned in 2013, but there has been little progress since then, reports TimesLIVE.
In February, Health MEC Nomafrench Mbombo said in a written parliamentary response to Windvogel that the funding for the project had been reprioritised, but that the budget had been vastly reduced.
“We have indicated that our budget has been dropped … more than a billion this year from the money that we were supposed to get from the national government,” she said.
Mbombo conceded the delay in rebuilding the facility, but added: “The issue was about why we would build a level-one hospital again on a site that is less than four hectares big, instead of building a level-two, specialist hospital. The budget issue is something we have to look out for. It’s not only the GF Jooste hospital; it's other hospitals as well.”
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