The IFP in KwaZulu-Natal is furious that the KZN Health Department spent almost R2.5m to fix faulty lifts at Addington Hospital in Durban. TimesLIVE reports that the 142-year-old hospital has been plagued with issues regarding the facility's elevators, with KZN Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu, having recently considered moving the hospital due to the “salt air”, which she claimed was the main contributing factor towards the rust.
IFP provincial spokesperson for health Ncamisile Nkwanyana reiterated the call for the hospital management to be fired and for the two service providers, Schindler Lifts SA and Otis, to be blacklisted.
TimesLIVE reports that Nkwanyana's call follows a response to a parliamentary question on how much the department had spent on the repair of faulty lifts at the hospital. According to Simelane-Zulu's response, the department revealed that by 31 October it had paid R2,420,653.82 to Schindler Lifts SA and Otis.
According to the report, Nkwanyana said it is “outrageous” that such a large sum of money had been paid to these companies, which have proved to be “incompetent”.
Nkwanyana said the government continues to lose millions of rand while contractors in the province are not delivering as expected.
The IFP urged the provincial government to entrench performance-based systems for contracts, and to “move towards weeding out contractors who do shoddy work”.
The report says it has reached out to the two lift companies but had not received a response at the time of publishing.
[link url="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2021-03-10-fire-addington-hospital-management-and-blacklist-lift-contractors-ifp-urges-kzn-health-department/"]Full TimesLIVE report (Open access)[/link]
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[link url="https://www.medicalbrief.co.za/archives/da-calls-for-a-sahrc-investigation-into-situation-at-addington-hospital/"]DA calls for a SAHRC investigation into situation at Addington Hospital[/link]
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