This is according to the party’s Andrew Louw, who is the leader of the opposition in the Provincial Legislature. Louw says the facility remains a white elephant and yet the provincial Premier, Sylvia Lucas, boasted about its completion during her State of the Province Address (SOPA) last week. 

Louw’s statements come after the party paid a visit to the mental facility yesterday (Friday) and found it unused. Louw said Lucas, in her replies to the opposition’s SOPA debates, announced that the appointment of a number of personnel for the facility, including approximately 25 nurses and 5 medical officers, were due to start work yesterday but during the DA’s visit to the hospital yesterday, these new appointees were nowhere to be seen.

Louw lambasted the provincial health department for allegedly dragging its feet on ensuring that the health facility becomes up and running as he said it had over ten years to ensure a smooth transition from the old West End Building to the new one.

According to  TimesLive, the construction on the 286-bed hospital began in 2006. While it was initially supposed to be handed over to the Northern Cape Health Department in 2008‚ but the project was repeatedly delayed‚ partly due to a legal dispute between the provincial department of public works and its first contractor‚ Vista Park Developers. The department fired Vista after realising it was not coping with the magnitude of the project. Over the past ten years‚ the cost of the project has ballooned from R290 million to R1.86 billion.

OFM News had requested answers with regards to this matter from the provincial health department, however, at the time this article was published, the Department had not yet responded. OFM News will write a follow-up article on receipt of the department’s response.

OFM News