MyPE

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Another New Brighton Clinic break-in

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Dear MyPE

New Brighton Clinic
New Brighton Clinic

Last night, the New Brighton Clinic suffered another break-in, leaving it closed for a second consecutive week. Last week, the clinic was robbed of its computer as well as all of its recyclable geyser components.

The provincial government must take urgent measures to secure all clinics in Nelson Mandela Bay as they are becoming frequent targets of criminal elements. If this province was well-run, this should have been happening already.

This is very hard on patients who rely on the clinic. The DA calls on the provincial Department of Health (DoH) to prioritise roof and geyser repairs and to put an alarm into the roof. It will cost less than the repetitive repairs and will enable reliable healthcare.

Continuous break-ins at clinics in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro (NMBM) must end and the safety of staff and patients must be ensured.

Three other horror stories at clinics in the NMBM have caused unnecessary pain and suffering to thousands of people:

  1. A robbery at the New Brighton Clinic on Monday, 5 September 2016;
  2. A stabbing inside the Veeplaas Clinic two weeks ago;
  3. Robbery and alleged assault at the Zwide Clinic in July 2016;

I have tabled legislature questions to the MEC for Health, Dr. Pumza Dyantyi, about these incidents and about a woefully inadequate budget that allocates R377 000 to the maintenance of 51 facilities in the NMBM to service 1.2 million people.  This equates to an amount of R7 300 per clinic per annum and is clearly too little to maintain buildings or to provide safe spaces for those long suffering patients who queue from 04:00 in the morning or to the staff who risk life and limb for the DoH.

Where the DA governs in the Western Cape, our clinics are well resourced and budgets serve the health needs of all our people regardless of their status.

The DA will not give up until service excellence prevails in every municipality in this province because Health matters to every single one of our people.

Regards

Celeste Barker, MPL

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Port Elizabethan

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