The MK Party has come out in defence of Northdale Hospital workers, who resorted to using firewood to cook food for patients after the facility’s generators had failed to kick in during recent power outages in the Northdale area.
Upon receiving a report on the matter from the hospital’s management, KwaZulu-Natal Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane then requested that the department to “take the necessary disciplinary steps against those responsible”.
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However, MK Party MPL Simpiwe Mbatha Moyo said it was Simelane who should take responsibility for the Northdale Hospital debacle.
The MEC’s public statement confirms what the public feared: gross infrastructural failure and absence of a working contingency plan at a vital healthcare facility.
“Despite three generators, patients and staff were left exposed, particularly in critical areas like the hospital kitchen.
“Rather than owning up to the department’s failures, the MEC has chosen to discipline workers — workers who, in the face of confusion and failure, took courageous action to prevent further harm,” he said.
On Simelane’s statement that the hospital staff should have sourced food from other nearby public hospitals instead of putting patient lives at risk by using “unhygienic” methods to cook food, Mbatha Moyo said the workers were worried that some patients would die if they went without food.
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“It’s completely unrealistic and inhumane to expect kitchen staff, in the middle of a blackout crisis, to co-ordinate sourcing food from other hospitals without clear operational support.
These workers clearly understood the value of saving lives in a health institution under very difficult circumstances. They knew that patients needed food in order to take life-sustaining medication, and they acted swiftly to ensure that.
“The MK Party caucus views their actions not as misconduct, but as heroic intervention at a time when the department’s systems had collapsed.
“We strongly reject the scapegoating of workers while leadership hides behind bureaucratic language,” he said.