The National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union – Nehawu – in the Northern Cape has called for the immediate termination of the outsourced security company at the Robert Mangaliso Sobukhwe Hospital in Kimberley.
This comes after a patient, Deon Mkhwanazi, was shot and killed in his hospital bed in full view of other patients on Friday last week. Nehawu provincial secretary Steffen Cornelius says the shooting incident has left the union baffled.
He says that how armed men gained access to the hospital with the presence of security guards is incomprehensible.
“We have more than many times raised the issue of insourcing securities in government departments. The fact that we are paying millions of rands to a private company and then get thugs gaining access with firearms baffles us. This act gives strength to the call that outsourcing is a wasteful expenditure and our call to the MEC of health, comrade Maruping Lekwene, to rather terminate the current security contract with immediate effect and insource all workers.”
Meanwhile, the family of Mkwanazi is demanding answers from the provincial Department of Health on how security was breached at the hospital.
Mkwanazi’s brother, Lawrence, says his family is struggling to come to terms with the shooting.
“The Department of Health, the Premier Dr. Zamani Saul, they should tell this family and all other families that have people at that hospital how those people entered those premises. They must come and tell this family and they must take responsibility for the death of my brother. The security company which is there also should account for the death of my brother. We want the Department of Health to take responsibility for what happened; the manner in which my brother got shot.”
