Parliament, Friday 31 August 2018, The value added by the Taking of Parliament to the People programme of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) was once more asserted in the Free State’s Mangaung Metropolitan and Xhariep District Municipalities this week.
The NCOP’s eight groups of parliamentarians from various political parties, visited many health service delivery sites to assess progress made in addressing the concerns of the people of Free State during the main Taking of Parliament to the People (TPTTP) programme in August 2017. During the August 2017 visit, over 1450 concerns, undertakings and recommendations were registered and channelled to a series of executive structures including national and provincial departments and ministries, local municipalities, Chapter 9 institutions, State Owned Enterprises as well as Independent Entities for interventions.
This week’s site inspections and report back meetings, were introduced a few years ago to step up the push for action and resolution of the undertakings and recommendations of the NCOP, and to enhance the responsiveness of government to the developmental needs of the people. The verdict of the NCOP following the visits, engagements of implementers of policies and officials as well as the thousands of citizens in six public meetings held, is that, it remains a mixed bag of good practices and pockets of excellence on one side, and a bundle of continued failures on the other side.
The NCOP’s view is that the pockets of excellence should continue to be celebrated and acknowledged so that excellence in service delivery becomes progressively our habit, while stepping up consequence management to effectively deal with instances of failure and non-responsiveness of the implanting agencies of government policy. The multi-party groups that operated on the basis of consensus were united in their view that, there is great value in the continued programme of TPTTP, even if in some instances Parliamentarians observed that some of the health facility renovation projects were started just before the arrival of the NCOP inspection teams. We are also in unison in our call for tougher action against those who had unjustifiably failed to execute the undertakings and recommendations made about a year ago.
The teams emerged with a series of success stories and pockets of excellence in public service delivery, that are worthy of celebrating and acknowledging:
- The re-engineering and re-modelling of the emergency services of the Free State which are set to reduce citizens’ waiting period for emergency services from six-hours to less than two-hours and progressing. This matter of life-and-death has been addressed through the purchase of 60 state-of-the-art ambulances, 40 of which had been delivered and branded for deployment of ten of these ambulances per district of Free State. The Free State Emergency Management Services has also established three additional emergency control centres and is finalising the recruitment of 200 emergency support officials and drivers who will also assist in taking over or insourcing of the contracted emergency services over a period of six months starting in October 2018. The NCOP inspected the fleet of ambulances;
- The Pelonomi Tertiary hospital in Mangaung that experienced major service delivery gaps at the time of the NCOP’s visit in August 2017, has also turned the tide in so many fronts;
- Critical outcomes are telling a good story as maternal deaths decreased by 80% (15 – 3), neonatal deaths decreased by 64% (109 to 39) and Pneumonia deaths of under 5-year olds decreased from 9 to 4. These can be ascribed to progress in addressing a series of other contributory factors as critical vacancies including the Chief Executive Officer and tens of clinical staff that have since August 2017 been filled, while the recruitment of many other non-clinical staff is at an advanced stage. Although a lot more is still expected, significant improvements have been made in the hospital infrastructure including two fully functional boilers, seven back-up generators and electricity substations, lifts, theatres, biometric systems, security technology and the perimeter fencing to improve security;
- The Alfred Nzula Hospital if opened and fully operational and critical vacancies of, among others, 12 professional nursing vacancies as well as all operational clinic managers have been filled. The kick-off of the massive refurbishment of primary health care facilities in Xhariep, starting with the top five priority sites in this financial year is welcome, but will be closely monitored;
- The establishment of maintenance hubs between the district and national hospitals will definitely go a long way in reducing the spiralling costs of renovating and even replacing run-down health care facilities in the long run;
- The purchase of requisite equipment to enhance the quality of health service delivery in many facilities, as well as training of personnel to optimally utilise them, is welcome because this is as important as the refurbishments that are completed in many facilities such as Harry Gwala, Pule Sefatsa and Heidedal clinics, as well as Botshabelo and Pelonomi Hospitals; and
- The progress made in introducing an electronic patient records management system in all healthcare facilities, is welcome and should be accelerated, as it will improve efficiencies of the health care system and reduce waiting times of the patients, which in some instances can be six hours or more.
The hearts of Parliamentarians remain bleeding when considering the non-responsiveness and lack of movement in many other areas of serious concern to the citizens. Parliament believes that further methods of strengthening legislative oversight should be explored with citizens being at the centre of their design and execution. These outstanding areas of concerns include:
- Addressing, through speedy escalation, the serious shortages of life-saving drugs such as Anti-Retroviral drugs particularly in primary health care facilities. This will be treated as an emergency and the NCOP will raise the matter with the Minister of Health and the Member of the Executive Committee very soon;
- The perennial challenge of water shortage in Xhariep is a big concern and should be addressed once and for all;
- The fact that 32 of the 200 primary health care facilities in the Free State are in a serious state of disrepair, and require refurbishment, including those in the Mangaung and Xhariep areas, should be attended with the urgency they deserve; and
- The issue of vacancies of clinical and non-clinical staff in most of the facilities visited has emerged as a recurring challenge. The continued reduction of Departmental baselines in terms of fiscal allocations year-on-year, has a negative knock-on effect on the healthcare system and needs to be addressed, whilst also tightening the belt on unnecessary expenditure by the Health Administration.
Without doubt the value and the contribution of the Taking Parliament to the People programme to the realisation of Parliament’s three-legged-mandate, continues to grow. Besides ensuring that Parliament itself remains accountable to the people, the NCOP will continue to sharpen the methods and systems of channelling and tracking of service delivery concerns of the people. The outstanding matters from this report back session of TPTTP will be mainstreamed into various other processes of the NCOP and the National Assembly, including the work of Select Committee and Portfolio Committees respectively.
The NCOP wishes to reassure the people of South Africa that every effort will be made to ensure that the value of Parliament will never be diminished and to increase its capacity to effectively hold the Executive accountable. In the wake of the onset of the 4th Industrial Revolution, the NCOP will also explore how best the information and communication technology convergence, as well as artificial intelligence, could assist in taking its interface with the citizens and their participation in carrying out its mandate to a higher path.
In September and November 2018, the NCOP will proceed with taking parliament to the people programme to the Gauteng Province. The lessons learnt in the Free State TPTTP programme will be used to sharpen the planning and execution of the Gauteng leg of the programme.
I thank you
For media inquiries or interviews with the Leader of the NCOP TPTTP Delegation in Free State, Mr Jomo Nyambi, please contact: Modise Kabeli - Mobile: 081 7159969 (076 0622180-Manelisi), email: mkabeli@parliament.gov.za OR mwolela@parliament.gov.za
ISSUED BY THE PARLIAMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA ON BEHALF OF MR JOMO NYAMBI, HOUSE CHAIRPERSON OF COMMITTEES, OVERSIGHT AND IGR AND LEADER OF THE NCOP REPORT BACK VISIT TO FREE STATE
For your ease of reference, kindly find attached links for three audio clips and and one video clip.
Inwords: One thing that we will do….
Outwords: ….. National Council of Provinces.
Duration: 50 Sec (All three clips:
https://we.tl/t-QT9N5yMtsW
Inwords: The last time we were here …..
Outwords: we give them 100%
Duration: 44 Sec
Inwords: They are at the coal face…..
Outwords: ….. not to be part of it.
Duration: 48 Sec
Raw video: https://we.tl/t-KqqnHFBvYn
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