Blacklist Tembisa Hospital looters now

THE State’s commitment to punish the culprits behind the looting of about R2 billion of public funds at Tembisa Hospital rings hollow when not a single company has been barred from doing business with the government.

It also makes it hard to be confident that the so-called service providers that were implicated this grand-scale looting are not benefiting elsewhere from other hospitals. 

Most of all, it betrays the fight against corruption, especially in light of the fact that whistleblowers like Babita Deokaran were killed for fighting against the corruption that has robbed Tembisa Hospital and the communities surrounding it of not only the resource they so desperately longed for, but the lives of poor patients.

Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi should be commended for the hard work he has displayed towards advocating for improved public health care in South Africa. 

However, his confirmation that not a single company has been blacklisted is cold comfort. The looting involved 207 service providers who traded with the hospital under 4,501 purchase orders that were found to be irregular. 

The state cannot confidently claim that none of these service providers are enriching themselves from the public purse when the Special Investigating Unit is still busy compiling a list to be submitted to the National Treasury for blacklisting.

One assumes this cannot or should not take long especially when so much investigative work has already been done, unless there is an underhand somewhere. 

Among those implicated in the looting are syndicates led by attempted murder accused Vusimuzi ‘Cat’ Matlala and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s nephew from a previous marriage Hangwani Maumela.

It should not be rocket science to identify which of their companies are still registered in the government database and continue to receive business from the state. 

Further delays in completing this process not only risks erasing the commendable work that has been done including recovering the public funds stolen from Tembisa, but also invites speculation that someone somewhere is benefiting from the continued existence of these service providers in government systems. 

We therefore implore officials to expedite this process. It should not be business as usual. We owe it to Deokaran. We owe it to the patients without beds and food at Tembisa Hospital. 

CAPE TIMES