The Freedom Front Plus (FF Plus) Member of the Provincial Legislature (MPL), Armand Cloete, accused MEC Montseng Tsiu of wasting taxpayers' money, by hiring a helicopter used by emergency medical services personnel.

“Policies guide budgets and we are not necessarily voting against services but the guiding principles that allocate money to the departments. Let’s look at health, yes there is a decline in management salaries in the past four years in administration but there is a steady but noticeable increase in the MEC’s office from R1.7million in 2019 to R12.4 million in the new financial year. In the meantime, there is a shortfall in clinical positions. In fact, of the R8 billion budgeted for the cost of employees this year, only 12% are for clinical personnel. We need more money for doctors and nurses, MEC, not for top-of-the-food-chain administrative personnel.

EFF MPL, Lirampele Nanyane, said the budget by Tsiu did not address the demands and needs of residents in the province.

“The department has excessive irregular expenditure from the 2017 and 2018 financial years, up until now, with the last financial year's R441 million, and nothing has been done. The department is proving to be problematic with excessive unauthorised expenditure. And in the main, the current allocation to more than two of the projects is illogical. We do not even have a vaccine rollout and the target are not well thought through. There is no sober individual who will support such. Year in and year out, we are informed about a lack of consequence management and things remain unchanged,” Nanyane adds.

DA MPL Mariëtte Pittaway lashed out at MEC Tsiu and her department over unpaid monies of medical staff, including doctors and interns.

“Despite my three statements in the past two weeks in this august House - and being told that all affected staff have been paid - Madam Speaker, they have not been paid. I’ve sent a list of unpaid or short-paid staff to the premier and the MEC to prove it and I confirmed at 9 o’clock this morning that vital staff have still not been paid. We have lost doctors in the Free State to other provinces due to this negligence,” she adds.

However, both the ANC and the MEC defended the department against the accusations.

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