Gauteng Health underspends R905 million

1 December 2020

The Gauteng Health Department has underspent by R905 million in the last financial year which ended on 31 March 2020.

This is revealed in the Department’s 2019/20 Annual Report which was tabled in the Gauteng Legislature last week.

Most of the underspend is accounted for by District Health Services, which failed to spend R662 million, while R106 million was not spent by Health Sciences and Training, and Health Facilities Management did not spend R36 million.

It is very disappointing that this department has yet again failed to spent its entire budget despite the pressing health needs in the province. Last year it failed to spend R750 million.

The one bright spot is that the department surpassed its revenue target by R191 million and collected R728 million in total for patient fees. This was achieved by collecting long-outstanding debts from other provinces and government departments. But a general lack of follow-up or inability to pay patient fees has led to a huge amount of R1.685 billion written off as bad debt.

Other indications of poor financial management include irregular expenditure of R2.3 billion mainly as a result of month to month security contracts, and the lack of a contract for cardio and nuclear consignment stock items. 

Furthermore, fruitless and wasteful expenditure amounted to R9.3 million, largely due to interest from late payments for medical negligence in court-ordered settlements.

I hope that new leadership at this department places a high priority on fixing the deep-rooted financial mismanagement so that budgets are spent effectively and efficiently.

Issued by Jack Bloom, DA Gauteng Shadow Health MEC, 1 December 2020