TSHWANE - Former Gauteng Finance MEC, Barbara Creecy, has refuted former Gauteng Health MEC, Qedani Mahlangu's, claims that the decision to terminate the Life Esidimeni contract, had been taken by a budget committee chaired by then former premier David Makhura.
On Tuesday, Creecy testified at the Life Esidimeni Inquest, heard by the Pretoria High Court.
The inquest seeks to determine who should be held criminally liable for the deaths of 141 mental health patients after the Health Department moved them to ill-equipped NGOs in 2015.
When former Health MEC Qedani Mahlangu, was asked two-weeks ago who terminated the Life Esidimeni contract, she pointed fingers at the Premier Budget Committee, or PBC.
She said, "the decision was taken by PBC chaired by the premier, Makhura, and I was present in that meeting and I’ll continue to own up to that decision because I was part of the decision making.”
But on Tuesday, Barbara Creecy, who formed part of that committee dismissed Mahlangu’s claims.
Creecy said, "that decision could not have been taken, because it would’ve been an unlawful decision, and I’ve already explained that the Public Finance Management Act, does not give the premier and four MECs the right to terminate."
"Furthermore, the instruction as the other counsel suggested earlier that the head of department must terminate the contract, the constitution requires that such an instruction needs to be in writing, for the simple reasons that politicians have no power to make that kind of decision.”
Creecy says the presentation made by Mahlangu’s department at a November 2014 meeting of the premier budget committee, said nothing about moving patients to NGOs.
Instead it said mental patients would be placed at government institutions to reduce the amount of bed usage at Life Esidimeni by 20 percent per year.
Mahlangu’s response to a parliamentary question in the November 2015 meeting of the Gauteng Legislature’s Health Portfolio committee was read out in court.
Advocate Adila Hassim said, "she says let me lastly end with Life Esidimeni. We’re not married to any service provider member Bloem, and the point we made in public and I want to repeat in this committee is that we’re not going to throw any patient away, if people have shares at Life, it’s not our problem."
"If people have personal interests at Life Esidimeni, it is not our problem. What we’re saving is R300-million that we’re spending at Life, yet we can keep the patients in other facilities differently with the same level of care, without necessarily spending that amount of money, because we no longer have the money.”
But Creecy told the court the mental health care and Life Esidimeni budget allocations were never reduced, instead they increased.
Former Gauteng premier David Makhura will take to the witness stand on Wednesday.