Hospital's Nightmare Comes True - Deliveries Stop Because SSO Stops Paying Invoices
The Gauteng Shared Services Centre in South Africa denied in March that a backlog of payments to service providers for state hospitals caused a food shortage.
This was in response to a statement issued by the spokesperson on health from within the province of Gauteng, Jack Bloom, who said that the GSSC's failure to pay invoices meant suppliers were refusing to deliver goods at hospitals.
"Patients at the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital have not had fish or chicken for about three months, receiving mostly pap and a bit of meat when available," he said. Bloom said bread was also a problem and that the situation extended to other hospitals in Gauteng.
"I have spoken to many suppliers, who all complain of complex paperwork and inefficiency that delays payments. The payments backlog is huge, amounting to more than R10-million (€800,000)," he said.
It was then announced that the CEO of GSSC would be leaving in August (though this was apparently expected), and that AP staff would be working over time to deal with the back log of unpaid invoices.
