The Northern Cape has the country’s highest incidence of employment corruption in the public health sector.
This is according to a report by Corruption Watch.
Since its launch in 2012, Corruption Watch has received almost 700 reports of corruption relating to health. Of these cases, 55% came from the Northern Cape.
The report, titled “X-Ray: The critical state of the health sector in SA”, points to the devastating impact of corruption on the lives of people reliant on receiving basic healthcare services from public health facilities in South Africa.
Corruption Watch researcher Melusi Ncala, author of the report, says our major headache as a country is to apportion scarce resources to an ailing public health sector that is inherited from apartheid South Africa.
The most prevalent forms of corruption in the sector countrywide are employment corruption (39%), procurement corruption (22%) and the misappropriation of resources (16%).
In the area of employment, this manifests as absenteeism, allegations of nepotism and favouritism and the appointment of unsuitable candidates, with no accountability for decisions around employment.
“With regards to nepotistic appointments, unqualified persons are appointed to fill positions that are too demanding, and more importantly, work is often neglected, or tasks are not completed, which is one of the contributing factors for poor service delivery.”
The Northern Cape has the third highest number of incidents reported of misappropriation of resources, namely 18%, which involves the mismanagement of funds and use of state resources for their own benefit by officials and employees of various hospitals and clinics.
The outcome of these corrupt activities is shortages of medication, lost or damaged equipment, and unlawful pressure on state resources, which can even lead to loss of lives.
Another area of concern is corruption in procurement, which takes the form of inflated pricing, irregularities in awarding of tenders, preferential treatment of suppliers, and kickbacks paid to officials when contracts are awarded.
However, only 9% of these incidents were reported in the Northern Cape, the report states.
The issue of corruption in the health sector should be of paramount concern as it prevents a vast section of the population from accessing their right to decent healthcare, Ncala says.
“The criminals occupying the halls, offices, wards and dispensaries of our health centres are compounding the problems we face by siphoning funds from a kitty that is running dry and by thieving from depots that are short on medical supplies.
“At the end of it all, almost 50 million people’s constitutional right to life amounts to nought. The question arising from this report is, therefore, when is it your turn to fall victim – or your turn to ring the alarm on corruption,” says Ncala.
