A pressure group opposed to the demolition of Itsoseng’s Thusong Hospital in the North West has threatened to go all the way to the Constitutional Court in a bid to prevent the provincial government from tearing down the facility.
The group known as Reclaim Thusong Hospital Committee rejected the government’s claims that the hospital, which serves the community of Itsoseng and surrounding areas, is built on uninhabitable land.
The founder of the pressure group Babey Makgeledisa said people’s rights were violated and that the department of health did not follow the right procedures by informing the residents of their intentions of demolishing the hospital.
“We want our hospital to be reinstated and renovated to serve the people. They are saying people should go for treatment at the community health centre. The community centre doesn’t have water for starters, it doesn’t have a dispensary, and it doesn’t have wards. I don’t know why they should build a hospital in Lichtenburg while we have a fully-fledged hospital that was operating as Thusong.
“We intend to go to the Constitutional court, as I’m speaking we are busy consulting our lawyers. We have information that proves that there is no dangerous dolomitic soil that they claim and there never will be,” Makgeledise said.
The North West Department of Health spokesperson, Tebogo Lekgethwane, said the department will proceed to tear down the facility irrespective of what the pressure group says.
“The department is aware of this group of people who are against the closure and the demolition of the building, which hosted the hospital. They claim to have proof that there is no dolomite. But the department on the other side has its own proof that the soil is dolomitic.
“The department also has records of having maintained the building, and yet the building keeps cracking. That is the reason why the department has deemed it necessary to cease any further development in the building that used to hold Thusong Hospital,” Lekgethwane said.
Lekgethwane refuted claims that community health centres don’t have the capacity to treat the patients from Thusong Hospital.
“The issues of health delivery are not true. The services both at Itsoseng Community centre, which is now being expanded into a hospital as well as at General Deleray have been expanded to accommodate the services, which were rendered at Thusong hospital.
“If there are challenges, these are challenges that have always been there even when Thusong was operational. And the department continues to deal with those challenges by ensuring the expansion of the hospital services to cover all the communities of Ditsobotla.
“This is a development, particularly for the expansion of the two facilities into District hospitals. It’s a development for the entire community of Ditsobotla. So that when people are complaining, they need to take into consideration the need for the hospital to be central, to be accessible to all the communities of Ditsobotla. And not only for the people who are closer to where Thusong used to be,” he said.
