The Eastern Cape Department of Social Development said it would announce a new service provider by the end of this month that will provide frail care services in Nelson Mandela Bay.
This, after the Department's contract with Eastern Cape Frail Care (PTY) LTD ended last December, sparking concerns about the future well-being of more than 200 elderly and disabled people.
Their families obtained a court interdict with the return date being later this month.
In a statement Thursday, Social Development MEC, Nancy Sihlwayi, said that she would announce a one-year contract with a new service provider by the end of February.
“This period will be used to stabilise the funding and service delivery model to benefit equally all frail care centres across the province. After the one year contract lapses, the department would have been ready for a long-term contract,” she said.
MEC Sihlwayi said there would be stringent specifications listed for the recruiting of a new service provider.
“It must be registered and vetted by the Department. It must have been providing frail care services for no less than three years. It must have a proven track record of good service,” she said.
Sihlwayi also “made it clear that the mandate of her department is to look after the vulenerable, elderly and disabled” and “where there is illness (need for constant energy supply, medication, etc) that will be the competency of the health department.”
She said therefore, “the hybrid plan of the department involves the health department and other stakeholders.”
The Department said Sihlwayi addressed the plenary of the Eastern Cape Provincial Legislature to provide an update on the “strides the department is making to realise the objectives of good governance and accountability.”
Sihlwayi also used the opportunity to “dispel the misleading parallel that many in the opposition seek to draw between the Health Ombudsman Professor Malegapuru Makgoba’s report and efforts of the Department to redress the anomaly and exorbitance in subsidies paid for beneficiaries at Lorraine and Algoa Frail Care centres in Port Elizabeth.”
“We have taken note and learnt with necessary compassion on what has been revealed by the Health Ombudsman’s report on the tragedy in Gauteng. It offers us great opportunity to be extra vigilant and meticulous on what we seek to rectify with the exorbitant subsidies we pay for the two frail care centres in Port Elizabeth. But equally bothering to make an inference on what we seek to correct in the irregularities regarding the frail care centres in question that it has parallels with the Health Ombudsman’s report.”
“The fact is that the R18 000 that government is footing for each beneficiary at the two private frail care centres is exorbitant and unsustainable. The Department’s contract with the Eastern Cape Frail Care (PTY) LTD (ECFC) ended in December 2016,” Sihlwayi said.
“Now we are in discussion with the ECFC for a reasonable amount for the January and February 2017, while the 239 subsidy beneficiaries are still housed at both the Lorraine and Algoa frail care centres.”
