The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] in the Western Cape calls on the DA Government to account for its failure to build a new healthcare facility to replace the GF Jooste Hospital after more than 12 years since its decommissioning. 

In 2014, the DA Government had taken a bizarre and appalling decision to decommission the hospital and promised to build a new Healthcare facility that would replace the GF Jooste Hospital by 2016. Instead, the opposite has occurred over the last decade, with no building of any new healthcare facility despite presented budgets in legislature for this project which turned to be a mere campaign strategy for all these years. 

The decommissioning of GF Jooste Hospital came at a great cost for people in the surrounding areas, as they had lost access to a healthcare facility that used to provide health service to thousands of people as a result had to travel many kilometres in order to get services in Khayelitsha District Hospital. However, the GF Jooste Hospital used to provide for thousands of working class families in the surrounding areas as a level-one district hospital, however used to provide health services that are at secondary level hospital with specialist services such as obstetrics and gynaecology, and surgical specialists…etc. 

We find it deplorable that the DA Government has not moved an inch to build a new healthcare facility as per their promise when decommissioning the GF Jooste Hospital, and this is against the background of healthcare system that is confronted by insurmountable challenges which amongst others range from staff shortages, dilapidated healthcare infrastructure, and shortage of medicines. 

Indeed, the DA Government has demonstrated beyond any reason doubt that it does not value or care about the welfare of the working class families and this is evident by its failure to build a new healthcare facility replacing GF Jooste Hospital, but planning through its deployees in the City of Cape Town to build a R180 million security wall which must divide the rich from the poor. It is totally unacceptable that the government has neglected its duty of ensuring that the people in surrounding areas receive quality healthcare services.

As NEHAWU, we call on the DA Government to account for its dismal failure since 2014 to build a new healthcare facility replacing the decommissioned GF Jooste Hospital and to provide improved quality service to our people in order to better their lives particularly, the working class and the poor. 

END

Issued by NEHAWU Western Cape Secretariat

For more information, please contact: Cde Baxolise Mali (NEHAWU Western Cape Provincial Secretary) at 066 3050 591 or Baxolise@nehawu.org.za Or Cde Zukisani Mabhengu (Western Cape Provincial Deputy Secretary) at 0636851924 or email: Zukisani@nehawu.org.za