Africa-Press – South-Africa. While reports about ailing infrastructure and shortages of staff and equipment in the public health sector have garnered widespread attention, empty piggy banks, as cited by the government, may not be the root cause.
Provincial health departments across the country underspent their 2022/23 budgets by over R3 billion – with less than R1 billion in those unspent funds being rolled over to the next financial year.
This was revealed by health minister Joe Phaahla in response to a question posed to him in parliament, showing that provincial health departments underspent their budgets by millions – the majority of which relate to condition grants.
Gauteng – R2.7 billion
North West – R200.6 million
Western Cape – R180 million
Northern Cape – R141.4 million
Limpopo – R103.5 million
Free State – R85 million
Eastern Cape – R62.2 million
Mpumalanga – R25.3 million
The KwaZulu Natal provincial health department was the only one to have spent its entire allocated budget in 2022/23 financial year.
Gauteng accounted for the bulk of the understand, totalling R2.7 billion.
Numerous reasons were given for the underspending of funds, including late invoices, slow construction, reduced nursing student enrollment, delays in claims submission, and the overlooking of conditional grants.
In a media statement, the Health and Allied Workers Indaba Trade Union (HAITU) slammed what it called “pathetic, unconvincing excuses,” saying that “hospitals are collapsing.”
The union has voiced several concerns to provincial health departments, including the unemployment of hundreds of healthcare workers, leaky ceilings in ICU wards, elevators that are out of order which make it difficult to transport patients, shortages of essential items due to non-payment to suppliers, and inadequate security measures in hospitals.
However, the union said that whenever these concerns are raised, they are dismissed by the health departments citing “budgetary constraints”.
HAITU said it was almost like a slap in the face “to find out that these departments have failed to spend the money which was allocated to them.”
The union added that the various MECs of health’s “glaring failure to spend contributes to the shocking state of public healthcare in this country,” however, it is their “members [that] have to bear the brunt of the anger of the community every single day.”
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