A mobile clinic parks outside of the Colchester clinic once a week because the building is not suitable to treat patients any longer. The Eastern Cape Department of Health says it would cost millions of rand – which it can’t afford — to refurbish the dilapidated building.
- The Eastern Cape Department of Health has admitted that the condition at the Colchester clinic is not fit for purpose.
- Patients complain that the building used for the weekly clinic is falling apart and has no electricity, water and toilets.
- The department says the weekly mobile clinic is sufficient to treat patients in the community.
- Department spokesperson, Siyanda Manana says it would cost millions of rand — which it can’t afford — to refurbish the dilapidated building.
The Eastern Cape Department of Health has admitted that the condition at the Colchester clinic is not fit for purpose. But says it would cost millions of rands – which it can’t afford — to refurbish the dilapidated facility.
Colchester is north-east of Gqeberha, near the Addo Elephant National Park. It is part of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality.
Patients say conditions in the building have been deteriorating and that no maintenance has been done since the Covid lockdown in 2020.
GroundUp visited the clinic in May 2024 after patients complained that the building used for the weekly clinic was falling apart and had no electricity. We found that there were broken windows and holes in the ceiling. There were no lights inside the prefabricated building and no running water, so patients walked to the community hall on the same property to use the toilet.
At the time, the department told GroundUp that the cost of refurbishing the building would be at least R1.7-million, which the department did not have.
We returned to the crumbling prefab structure on Wednesday and found the facility in a worse state. The ceiling had many holes while the windows were badly vandalised. The consulting room can only be opened and closed with a tablespoon being used as a door handle.
When we arrived, there were a handful of patients seated inside the prefab, waiting for nurses to arrive in the mobile clinic. The vehicle usually arrives at 10am, but patients say everyone is not assisted by the time nurses pack up by 3pm. Residents asked why the mobile clinic doesn’t come twice rather than once a week.
Another complaint was their struggle to get ambulances to come to Colchester, especially at night and over weekends. As a result, people have to pay to hire transport or hitchhike to the nearest health facility in Motherwell.
Resident Maria Julyan, who lives about ten minutes from the clinic, says she has to go home to use the toilet. She asked that the department fix the toilets, windows and the water infrastructure.
In a video shared on its WhatsApp group this week, department spokesperson, Siyanda Manana, reiterated that the clinic operated as a satellite clinic once a week with a mobile unit.
“The Colchester clinic operates as a satellite clinic due to the dilapidated state of the building. Assessment of the condition of the infrastructure was carried out by the Nelson Mandela Bay health infrastructure team in 2021. The cost to repair the building was R1.7 million.
“Then the office was unable to proceed due to budget constraints. Another request was made again to the provincial office to renovate the structure, but that did not happen in the 2024 plan because the amount jumped to R3-million, and the condition of the building had worsened,” he said.
The department did not respond to our additional questions by the time of publication.
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Tse Tse Guy
A British man on safari walks into a bar far out in the reaches of a game reserve in Southern Africa, he stays at the bar for a while shooting the shit with the bartender and drinking like a fish, he offer to buy the barkeep a round and since no one else is within 2km of their small oasis of liquor the barkeep obliges. The englishman goes off to the bathroom to have a good old go at the porcelain, he\’s back and ready for a few more whiskeys. He\’s just sat down when suddenly in the distance he hears a scream. He looks over his shoulder and dismisses it as nothing, he turns to the barkeep and orders a drink, takes a sip and hears the scream again. He looks at the barkeep who just shrugs it off. A minute or two later he and the barman hear it again and go outside to take a look. They see a lone figure running towards them screaming, he spots them and lets out a cry, RUN!!!!! HE\”S COMING!!!!!
The barkeep and the Englishman both look at the terrified bedraggled sight before them, and try to calm him down, but he\’s completely inconsolable. They give him water and finally manage to get a word out of him but he struggles free from their grasp and run away screaming.
A few minutes later the same thing happens with a whole group of men running in and screaming, he\’s coming, he\’s coming the barkeep grabs hold of one of the men as he tries to sprint past the bar and tries to get information out of him, again no response other than terrified gibberish.
The barkeep and his customer are starting to get worried, they start to pack up before another group of horrified natives run up to the bar most of them flee but one tries to hide behind the bar, the barkeep pulls out a shotgun and points it at the terrified man\’s face, finally managing to coax some words out of him. \”He\’s coming for us, Vernon Koekemoer is coming for us, we have to hide!!! We have to get out of here.\” He gets up and tries to run but the barkeep grabs him, feeling trapped in a panic he grabs the barkeeps shotgun and blows his own head off. The Englishman and the barkeep look at each other starting to really panic now.
They look out of the window and off in the distance they see a tornado coming towards the bar, at the bottom of the tornado they see the hugest beast of a man they have ever seen, as he gets closer they spot that he is riding a rhinocerous and using a crocodile as a riding whip, with each smack of the crocodile across the back of the rhino the louder is screams and the faster it runs, the tornado following it getting ever larger.
The 2 look at each other and start to fortify their position, they\’ve got a gun and they\’re waaay to drunk to run, so they start piling bar stool and tables and anything they can get their hands on to make sure they\’ll be safe when he arrives. They\’re not gonna make it, they can see the man slowing down his rhino, by now the crocodile is nothing but reptile paste on the bruised rump of the half dead rhino, the rhino drops down dead from exhaustion and crashes to the ground right outside the bar the tornado loses it\’s last breath in a cloud of dust as the huge man crashes his way through the make shift barricade and charges up towards the bar where the 2 men have taken shelter, he grabs a bottle of the hardest liquor on the shelf and down the entire litre in 1 gulp, he peers over the bar sobbing and sees the 2 defenders cowering down behind the crates of beer, they look up at the mans\’ face and he stares at them with a look of complete and utter hopelessness, he stares at them for a half second and half screams, half sobs, \”Oh my god what are you still doing here!!! WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW!!!! Vernon Koekemoer is coming!!!!\”
Bones
One day we will all be writing like this.