The official opposition party EFF leader, Collen Sedibe, has urged the provincial government to intervene in alleged bad services from local health facilities.

Sedibe said, “You need to address this as a matter of urgency as some patients die on the benches. Woman give birth on ward floors, laundries are not working, forcing patients to use dirty and bloody linen. Some old patients even go back home after many hours without being attended to and that is bad, premier. Because hospitals are the only last hope for the sick and their core function is to save lives.”

“More often than not our people are complaining about the treatment they receive from the hospitals. They say they stand long hours in queues without being attended to,” he said.

In her response, Premier Refilwe Mtshweni-Tsipane, admitted that they do receive reports of poor treatment at local health facilities.

“The matter of hospital management and the treatment of patients is of great concern to us. From time to time we do get such reports of poor treatment of our people in our health facilities. However these have proved to be isolated cases that are dealt with swiftly and decisively,” she explained.

“As a province, we shall not tolerate behaviour which is against the Batho Pele principles,” she said.

Sedibe said when they ask the hospital CEOs and nurses, they complain about shortage of staff, particularly professional nurses and doctors.

ALSO IN PHOTOS: Ehlanzeni District’s Department of Education hosts its annual awards

“As the EFF public representatives we are obliged to adopt a clinic, school and a hospital. “We are required by our organisation to do random oversight visits to these institutions of government and establish whether the institutions are providing quality and professional service to our people.

We also check the condition (cleanliness and infrastructure) as well as the conduct of the employees and their attitude towards the people.”

ALSO READ: Barberton students affected as protests flare up

The newspaper has received various complaints from the public and forwarded them to the Department of Health.