Gauteng Health Department pays over R100m to legal consultant

The Gauteng Health Department made multiple headlines over the course of 2017, almost none of them had anything to do with good news. Now, the cash-strapped department has revealed the huge money it spent on attorneys.

In a written reply to DA Gauteng MPL Jack Bloom, Gauteng Health MEC Gwen Ramokgopa detailed that the department has paid R103 million to Ngcebetsha Madlanga Attorneys (NMA).

The payment covered a legal opinion on terminating the Life Esidimeni contract as well as opposing two court applications that attempted to halt the transfers of mental health patients.

As the nation now knows, those transfers did go through and 144 patients died at unsuitable NGOs across the province.

According to Ramokgopa’s reply, NMA was paid the R103m from October 2014 to September 2017, whereafter she is not able to obtain any reports of additional work “due to the exodus of senior legal officials who were directly involved in dealing with this service provider”.

The MEC says that the firm was first appointed by participating in a contract for a panel of legal service providers.

A contract or Service Level Agreement was signed on 4 January 2016. The initial length was meant to be ten months but that was extended in October 2017.

According to the DA’s Bloom, things seem a bit dodgy.

“This looks quite fishy, but Ramokgopa claims that ‘there were no irregularities identified in connection with this law firm’. In addition to work related to the Esidimeni saga, the firm did work on labour issues, medico-legal claims and some other matters.”

“The amount paid to this firm is grossly excessive, and it is disturbing that much of this was for bad advice that contributed to the Esidimeni tragedy.”

Ramokgopa has admitted that a “detailed review” of the work done by the law firm must be undertaken “given the amount of money/fees paid by the department”. This review will then decide if NMA received future legal work from the department.

The DA has rejected this idea and is calling for an independent inquiry into the “outrageous” payments.