A plea to serve and treat patients at a more accessible and effective municipal clinic can become a reality in Graaff-Reinet.
Public participation on improving the Kroonvale Clinic will be opened for the third time.
Councillors Xolile Galada (ANC) and Joy Williams (DA) intervened, stopping municipal intentions to move the existing clinic from the Kroonvale municipal building to the nearby Kroonvale Old Post Office.
At the May 11 Dr Beyers Naude municipal meeting, Galada and Williams stopped a proposal to relocate the clinic as recommended to council.
Galada said the Old Post Office is too small and not the appropriate place for efficient medical treatment and consultation. He described the existing clinic building as also not suitable.
Together with Williams, Galada pleaded to council to reopen public consultation on the issue, especially for municipal wards 4 and 5, whose residents make the most use of the clinic.
Galada asked that land be identified where a more accessible and effective municipal clinic could be build.
“I am a new councillor (Ward 4). I want to go and face the community. We must identify land and build a new clinic,” said Galada.
He made it clear that he did not doubt the work of previous councillors who had proposed the move to the post office building.
“Consulting is not just about asking, ‘How do you feel about relocating the clinic to the Old Post Office?’ There’s more behind the process and building a new clinic is one of the discussions that must take place,” Galada added to the plea.
Speaker Cheslin Felix (CSA) approved Galada and Williams’s plea and sent the item before council back for public consultation.
In the item it was proposed that the SPU skills-hub at the Old Kroonvale Post Office be moved to the Kroonvale Library Hall. For now they will stay where they are.
It’s also made clear that a meeting with the Eastern Cape management of Department of Health must be entered into, “as part of the public consultation”.