Residents in the Kutama area are angry and frustrated about the lack of progress with the construction of two clinic buildings. The projects were supposed to be finished months ago, but still work is continuing at a snail's pace.

Two separate contractors, Hahlani Trading and Mintirho Business Enterprise, were hired to do construction work on the Kutama clinic and the Midoroni clinic.

The R9.4 million project at the Kutama clinic was awarded for building the clinic and upgrading the staff housing complex. The project, according to the minutes of one of the meetings, commenced on 22 October 2010 and contract completion was put for 21 October 2011. The contractor failed to complete the project by the set date and was given an extension of 81 days, which meant that they should have finished work on or by 2 March 2012.

“Clinic staff members are working from an old, shaky and dilapidated building while government has coughed up millions for the new structure and the upgrading of old ones,” says the chairperson of the clinic committee, Mokgadi Ralidzhivha. “The delay in completing the project hampers service delivery to nine villages that solely depends on this clinic for health services. If things are like this, you can't blame the clinic staff for a lack of service at the clinic.”

Ralidzhivha claims that Hahlani Trading's contract was terminated around November 2011 and that a new contractor had since been hired to start from where Hahlani had left off. “This new contractor has also stopped working, because they still owe him money,” she says. “I don't think that he is even known to the department.”

Meanwhile, the construction of the new clinic and staff housing complex at Midoroni is nearing completion, although it should have been completed on 5 March 2012. Mintirho Business Enterprise, who has received R7.8m of the R12.5m contract budget to date, was granted a time extension of 26 days on 5 March, which ended on 18 April 2012. However, the workers are still busy working at the site six months after this date.

The Limpopo spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Development, Sinenhlanhla Gumede, said that the department was aware of the problems of the two uncompleted clinics. She said that the projects had been put on hold due to budgetary constraints. “We understand the frustration of the affected communities,” said Gumede. “But we would like to assure the community that the construction work will resume in the next financial year.”

She then assured the communities that the department was still committed to ensuring that they have efficient and accessible primary health care facilities in the area. The department's financial year starts on 1 April and ends on 31 March the following year. Gumede did not confirm whether it was true that a new contractor had been sought in place of Hahlani Trading. All attempts to trace Hahlani were fruitless.

The Kutama Traditional Authority still blames the health department for lack of proper monitoring of the two projects. “We have been doing our job from the beginning, where we monitored the projects,” says the traditional authority chairperson, Mr Gilbert Muofhe. “We don't understand why the projects haven't been completed by now. Our people are crying and our feeling is that the department didn't manage their things correctly, somewhere, somehow.”