Gauteng appoints audit firm to clean up health

Tabling the Gauteng Provincial Treasury's Budget Vote yesterday, Finance MEC Mandla Nkomfe said the audit firm had been appointed on a two-year contract.

This comes after Premier Nomvula Mokonyane announced in November last year that an administrator would be appointed to help clean up administrative challenges that had haunted the department for months.

Amongst these included the department's failure to pay service providers for months, while according to treasury regulations, the turn-around time to pay invoices is 30 days.

"...driven by the strategic intent that we have outlined above, the work to stabilise and build a strong Gauteng Department of Health that provides quality health care services to the people of our province is continuing as planned.

"In this regard, we have appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers as the administrator who will work with the provincial government to re-engineer business processes in health," Nkomfe said.

He said the intervention and the appointment of the external audit firm, however, did not mean that the department had been placed under administration.

"We are strengthening the financial management capacity of the department so that it could continue to provide quality health services to the public. We believe that the two-year period is enough to complete this work.

"This is because our focus is on the provision of efficient and effective public health services to the people of Gauteng. That is why health must be turned around urgently to fulfil this mandate."