NHI: AfriForum and public want to voice their opposition, but government gives too little opportunity

Public hearings on the National Health Insurance Bill are hopelessly too few, inadequately advertised, poorly located and unreachable for working people. This is what the civil rights organisation AfriForum has to say after the last hearings in Gauteng and the Western Cape have been completed.

AfriForum did not receive a response to a legal letter to the Gauteng Legislature regarding the NHI public hearings and the DA in the Western Cape has insisted that more than a mere seven public hearings should be held in that province. AfriForum points out that there were only three public hearings in Gauteng and no further hearings in the other provinces yet. There is also no orderly format to the hearings and speakers are often given insufficient opportunity to complete their presentations. The civil rights organisation demanded in a legal letter on 19 September that the public participation process in Gauteng be expanded and properly conducted, but the provincial legislature did not respond by the time the deadline was reached.

“There are 15 million residents in Gauteng whose healthcare can be irrevocably changed by this bill, but at most 1 500 of them had a chance to make their voices heard about it. This cannot be counted as civic engagement,” says Louis Boshoff, AfriForum’s spokesperson about NHI. “The ANC realises that South Africans are opposed to NHI and is therefore trying to keep them quiet.”

Boshoff further states that the public participation process was set up in the interest of ordinary residents of the country, but that the government is trying to limit public decision-making to a small political elite by deliberately watering down the participation process.

“Where fair opportunity for public participation is required, we will insist on fair opportunity for public participation,” concludes Boshoff.

AfriForum encourages members of the public to oppose NHI at public hearings or by visiting www.jougesondheid.co.za for further information.