Finance MEC Oscar Mabuyane announced a R675m top-up for the provincial budget, half of which would be used to buy medicine for public health centres and food for patients.
Mabuyane was tabling the mid-term budget at the Raymond Mhlaba chambers in Bhisho on Thursday.
He said the R300m injection into the health department had been ring-fenced specifically “to pay service providers who are supplying the department with non-negotiable items such as medicines, food supplies and implants”.
This follows Daily Dispatch reports that medicine cabinets in some provincial health centres have run out of chronic medication such as ARV treatment. A shortage of food at Tower Hospital in Fort Beaufort and patients at times waiting up to three days for medication at Dutywa Community Health Centre were also among issues reported.
“The National Health Insurance Bill Act has been tabled and is now going for public comment. We are confident that when it is implemented, it would end the issue of medico legal cases in our province. The NHI will level the field for the provision of health care services between the rich and the poor,” said Mabuyane.
The revised budget will see the province’s budget increasing to R79.1bn, which Mabuyane said “should be used to accelerate delivery of socio-economic services to our people in the remaining few months of this term”.
Earlier this year, the National Treasury announced a total of R5.9bn cut in the province’s budget for the next three financial years due to migration of people to other provinces.
Mabuyane, in his budget speech on Thursday, said: “We are of the view that this formula should be changed as it has a stranglehold on service delivery in rural provinces such as ours. While we call for the revision of the formula, we must as well do the right things with what we have. There are areas where we have not spent funds that were meant for service delivery and where we have not spent. There are areas where there is no value to show for what has been spent.” Among those was the shocking admission the education department made that it had failed to spend more than half a billion rands earmarked for revitalising unsafe schools.
Mabuyane announced that a sum of R104m had been set aside to refurbish 38 boarding schools in the province. Makaula High School in KwaBhaca (previously Mount Frere) will receive R3.5m.
Mabuyane said they would continue to inject more resources into boarding schools, “as they are strategic in enhancing the culture of teaching and learning and in relieving the need of scholar transport”.
The announcement comes while service providers who assist in building and renovating these schools have been complaining about the delays in paying for services rendered.
The Dispatch reported in May that the state owes about 5,500 Eastern Cape private firms more than R311m for work done. The details were contained in parliamentary questions put to the then finance MEC Sakhumzi Somyo.
In a drive to unlock these bottlenecks, Mabuyane announced on Thursday that they had set aside an “exchequer account, (which has) an amount of R281m as a buffer to pay service providers who had completed the work they were assigned by the department...