By Odwa Bafana Mkentane
Patients at the Site B Khayelitsha Community Health Centre are facing yet another challenge, with broken toilets affecting a facility that serves between 25,000 and 28,000 people every month.
Speaking to VOC News, Khayelitsha Development Forum (KDF) chairperson Mawande Jara says, according to the facility manager, this has been happening for the past two weeks or so.
“In their capacity as the management of the institution, they have reached out to the institute and to relevant departments to sort that thing out, and up until this point this has not been resolved. We as a community find it very difficult and very much embarrassing on the end of the provincial government and all the departments that are responsible for the functionality of the facility itself. It’s very embarrassing that a critical institution like the primary healthcare facility won’t be able to maintain its ablution facilities, which is a major and essential service in that institution.
“You can imagine that if their facilities are not working, patients that are accessing that facility might be exposed to diseases. Also, it is not conducive for a health facility not to have an ablution facility because we are treating people with different things, and they would want to use toilets from time to time. So, we are really very much disturbed about this, and we really take it as a negligence from the side of the department,” said Jara.
Jara added that the provincial department of health should have made provision to ensure that the facilities are working properly.
“All we would want to see is a functioning facility. We are not being unreasonable, but we are also saying that yes, you can have that problem, but can it run for a period of two full weeks if you really care about your people? So that’s why I’m saying that that’s why we’re obvious that even the expression that they are giving, the expression that there is a problem with plumbing or infrastructure of the area, but the issue is that they should have made provision to ensure that the facilities are working properly,” he said.
Photo: Pixabay
