Health to hire project engineers

Shoddy workmanship, ballooning costs caused by irregular procurement processes and projects left unfinished by contractors have prompted the Department of Health to hire its own engineers to oversee this work in future. This comes after the Auditor-General’s office found that the lack of technical expertise in the department left it at the mercy of contractors to manage the projects. The parliamentary oversight committee on health heard on Thursday how incompetent contractors had been repeatedly awarded contracts despite their poor record; how government officials had flouted laws and regulations in awarding tenders; and how millions of rand had been spent on projects that were never completed.

MPs compared the findings of an audit of health infrastructure projects to a horror movie that would not end unless government officials were forced to pay for their mistakes. The auditors looked at more than 100 projects in the health sector. The senior manager of performance in the auditor-general’s office, Corrie Pretorius, said that to turn things around, the Health Department had committed itself to remedy some of the findings of the audit. He said the National Health Council had approved the appointment of resident engineers by all provincial departments of health. “That is something that was not done previously. Provinces like Northern Cape started with a big (psychiatric) hospital with a budget of R350 million without having an engineer or architect or any of those professionals on their staff to be able to deal with a contract of this volume; they just depend on the implementing agent to carry their project forward,” said Pretorius.

He said an integrated approach was being adopted to address health technology and infrastructure as one programme, to ensure efficiency and better planning. This would prevent the situation of a new hospital being rendered unusable because poor planning meant no equipment had been ordered. Planning was being boosted to ensure funding matched phases of the infrastructure plans, including maintenance and efficient management of professional fees. Projects were also being monitored on a monthly basis to pick up under-expenditure in advance and intervene where necessary. “This applies to the management of cash flow, too, as well as avoiding late payments and interest.” Pretorius said that as part of strengthening capacity and monitoring of projects, service level agreements would be signed with the provincial departments of health and public works to define the role of the various service providers.

He had told the committee earlier that procurement and contracting of more than 40 percent of infrastructure projects conducted by provincial departments of health contravened procurement procedures. Pretorius said the process of needs, determination and planning was found not to be effective, giving rise to unused and underutilised infrastructure. “The needs were determined 13 years before the acquisition of the resources to implement the plans. So you can understand that in a period of 13 years, there is quite a shift in the needs that exist for that specific infrastructure.”

In addition:

A robust procurement system was not consistently applied, compromising the transparency, accountability and economy with which decisions and commitments were made. Project management was not effective, resulting in projects that were not completed on time, were not up to scratch and cost more than envisaged at the start of the project.