By Neo Kolane
Representatives of Queen ‘Mamohato Memorial Hospital (QMMH) and officials of the ministry of health have expressed a need for the hospital be weaned from the ministry’s control and become autonomous, in order for it to be more efficient.
The unprecedented request was tabled before the cabinet last week before the QMMH entourage met the Parliamentary Social Cluster on Monday this week.
QMMH was formerly a public-private partnership managed by the Tshepong Consortium, led by Netcare, a South African health care provider.
The ministry took control of the hospital in 2021 when government terminated the 18-year long public private partnership agreement, which was then in its 13th year.
In a meeting with different stakeholders and the social cluster, the minister of health Selibe Mochoboroane pointed to last month’s delayed payment of QMMH employees’ salaries, as one of the indications that the hospital would be better off without being babysat by the ministry.
Mochoboroane added that the hospital was also unable to purchase much needed equipment and had to depend on his ministry’s support.
“A legal framework must be designed that allows the hospital to be an independent entity empowered to run its own affairs.”
Mochoboroane further said that the budget allocation to QMMH that was close to a billion was cut down to M300 million after the takeover, a shortfall that crippled services at the hospital and forced government to transfer patients to South Africa.
Mochoboroane added that some patients are referred to private hospitals for services such as scanning for various ailments. That, he said, was due to a shortage of proper medical equipment at this multimillion hospital.
“Another problem is the workforce. It is not exactly clear whether the employees of the facility are public servants who are engaged in an independent service provider,” he wondered.
Netcare Group, the major shareholder in the Tshepong Consortium that managed the QMMH handed over operations of the hospital and its four primary care clinics in Maseru to the government of Lesotho in 2021.
In another development, the director of academics at National Health Training College (NHTC) ‘Malefela Lehana said the college suffers immensely when it runs short of sufficient budgetary allocation.
Lehana said NHTC is a unique institution in the country, as it is the only school that gives health training programmes required by the ministry of health
She disclosed that other institutions that give academic health programmes are independent, going on to explain the college was established through the 1992 Order of parliament. Enabling it to be sponsored by the state’s ministry of health.
“When the budget of the ministry is cut, the budget of NHTC gets cut also and within that budget, it is expected to operate in full while other institutions are given subvention so that they find ways to generate money by themselves.
“NHTC is not allowed to make any other form of resource mobilization,” she said.
She said NHTC is pleading to be transferred to the ministry of education and become autonomous because “we are unable to meet the full accreditation standards of higher education.”
Lehana coughed out: “NHTC cannot even manage the budget given because it is managed by the ministry of health, all that the college is able to do is to submit requisitions,” she said.
