Monday, November 9, 2009

Creating opportunities in a Open Society



Creating opportunities in a Open Society for all :

Services and access to opportunities was kept away from the majority of our people. This is the history of our country and we can not hide away from this fact. The quetion beckons: How do we now create systems where opportunities are created for equal access to our people irrespective of racial, religious and cultural differences ?
The Democratic Alliance (DA) have a strong mandate to create an Open Society where all South Africans have individual freedom and equal access to opportunities. DA MP Wilmot James reflects on this credo in the DA Newsletter, Into the Future when he says ," Knowledge, creativity and freedom are the pillars of the DA's credo". We see that the DA have instituted this belief in the way it recruits for individuals in the party and in the local and Provincial structures it governs. We had a huge uproar from the media stating the appointment of an all male team for the Western Cape Province by our leader Helen Zille. The fact is if you look at the appointments all the gentlemen have superior knowledge of their respective fields. If we turn the coin we see that the African National Congress (ANC) have a strong cadre deployment policy which cripples the various government structures which should serve the interest of the people of South Africa. For instance the Director General (DG) of the Health Ministry, Thami Mseleku is not even qualified for his position. He is actually a qualified Linguist with no health experience. The Ministry who serves one of the most neccessary needs of our nation does not even have all the Senior Management positions filled. One of the most critical areas is that of Hospital Services. The DA will never jeoperdise the Constitutional Rights of it's people to have access to quality health care. We do our best to investigate and make sure services get delivered to all South Africans.
How do we create as we say in our credo transparency. We follow up and actually visit people where they at and seek to find solutions to challenges. Let's stay with health. Our previous Health Ministry Babara Hoskins visited Pelonomi Regional Hospital in the Free State .
The DA went in and took a team to investigate and see if the Ministry actually responded to the promises it has made.
In a question our DA Spokesperson, Mike Walters posted to the ANC led Health Ministry on the promises made, they could not answer and actually appologised to our collegue that they did not have answers.
How does an opposition party respond? By actually doing something. You gues right? This is actually what happenned in short:
On Monday,we visited the Pelonomi Regional Hospital in the Free State along with Shadow Minister of Health Mike Waters and his deputy, Emmah More. We were accompanied by DA MPL Basil Alexander and DA Councillor Arthur Terblanche.
Firstly, we decided to visit a public hospital against the background of the ANC government's proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme. We decided to visit a public hospital to highlight the problems that currently exist on the ground which, if properly addressed, will ensure quality health care for all, especially the poor, without having to introduce an unwieldy, expensive NHI scheme. (This is a short summary of the visit taken from www.da.org.za)
What transpired is that the proposed plan of the National Health Insurance from the ANC will cost you the tax payer more money and make it very expensive and not affordable to the poor of our society. What we need to do is improve the Systems of Administration, Pharmaceutical Access ( Not having one Pharmacist on Site for a State Hospital),Waiting areas to be serviced properly and emergency cases actually being serviced and rather investing in upgrading delapitating infrastructure and staff .
In Conclusion, the DA with this example of addressing Health Issues is a party that take action. We look at creative avenues of increasing our knowledge and be better prepared to serve the needs of the people of South Africa. People have the freedom to build a Free and Open Society with us irrespective of their backgrounds. In this case of Helath Delapitating we will as in the words of our Spokesperson for Helath, Mike Walters, " Most Health Managers are political appointees. The DA will take this up in the new Parlimentary session".

Sedrico Husselman,
sedrico@cdmag.co.za

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