Africa-Press – Botswana. Sir Ketumile Masire Teaching Hospital (SKMTH) is determined to give the lie to the belief that public sector employees are incapable of providing excellent service.
The hospital’s manager-care services, Mr Matshwenyego Setshego told a kgotla meeting in Serowe recently that despite the branding of Botswana’s labour force, especially the public sector, of having a poor work ethic, things would be different at the facility.
He said the hospital had already built a high performance culture at the core of which was professionalism and a customer-centric approach to the delivery of services.
Mr Setshego said the hospital’s management was alive to the fact that if not kept in check, poor work ethic would ruin the facility’s name adding that checks and balances were in place to guard against such an eventuality.
With COVID-19 abating, the hospital, which had been at the heart of patient care at the pandemic’s peak, now had the opportunity to shift its focus to its fundamental purpose of providing medical services, training health personnel and undertaking medical research, he said.
Mr Setshego was responding to comments made by a Serowe resident, Mr Kesiametswe Gabaake who had stated that given the public service’s notoriety for poor work ethic, SKMTH would be no different.
“Botswana’s work ethic is generally saddening. Unlike in the past, some employees in our hospitals today just work for pay. This makes me wonder where you will be sourcing your workforce from that will make your workers any different from the rest of the country’s labour force,” he said.
Another resident, Mr Mmoloki Shampeng pleaded with the hospital to religiously offer counselling in situations where the service was needed.
Mr Shampeng, who said he lost three family members to COVID-19 in the space of a week at the peak of the pandemic, alleged that SKMTH failed to provide the counselling he waspromised.
The hospital’s other official, Ms Selwana Pilatwe, its communications manager, said the well-resourced facility boasting medical specialists not found anywhere else in the public sector, would greatly help in lowering the burden of having to transfer patients to other countries.
She explained that while walk-in patients would not be turned away, they were encouraged to make use of other health facilities to avoid congesting the hospital.
Kgosi Botswelelo Mogapi of Ditimamodimo ward thanked the hospital for making cancer care and treatment one of its focus areas.
Acknowledging that cancer had become of late become a big concern, he said improved cancer care would help stall and eventually reduce the rate at which the disease was claiming lives.
The hospital staff had visited Serowe to update residents on the facility’s purpose as well as services offered.
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