Johannesburg - Former City of Joburg mayor Herman Mashaba and his successor Geoff Makhubo continue to take jabs at each other.
Currently, the duo have been giving their followers on Twitter something to write home about feuding over service delivery in the city and who executed it better.
The most recent twar saw Mashaba accuse the current mayor of rolling back the extended operating hours at clinics, despite the repercussions of Covid-19.
“This is despite the fact that city clinics, operating into the night and over weekends, would be an invaluable resource in the fight against Covid-19.”
Mashaba said in 2016 the multiparty coalition he led initiated a pilot project for extending operating hours of clinics.
The ActionSA leader argued that the extended hours saw 26 clinics operating late into the nights on weekdays and over Saturdays and Sundays.
Mashaba claimed that reports from the city’s Health Department revealed that more than 300 000 patients were treated after hours and there were 522 life-saving emergency treatments.
He said the city had been silent on measures it had taken during the pandemic, and besides its own procurement controversies, it was difficult to pinpoint a valuable contribution it had made to saving the lives of its residents.
Mashaba added the Princess Clinic, near Roodepoort, closed at 5pm and that residents lived far from the hospital, leaving them with no options nearby to seek life-saving treatments.
However, the city’s Health MMC Eunice Mgcina dismissed Mashaba’s claims, describing them as an attempt to cause destabilisation and confusion among residents.
“I wish to categorically state that these allegations fail to recognise that the programme was not stopped. They are meant to discredit the good work that the city is doing in delivering primary health-care services to the residents of Princess and surrounding areas, in particular, and the city’s residents in general.”
Mgcina said the extended operating hours at the Princess Clinic were started as a pilot project in November 2016 and that all new developments and changes were always communicated to ward councillors.
“In May 2019, the operating service hours at the Princess Clinic were adjusted from closing at 10pm to 7pm while Mr Mashaba was the mayor. This was a management decision following a presentation to the executive management in January 2018 where it was shown that the use of the clinic after 7pm was not cost-effective in terms of the headcount seen.”
Mgcina clarified that the extended operating hours in the city’s clinics had been adjusted since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in April last year.
The Star