"Provinces do not have a mental-healthcare budget in one place so that they can determine what is being spent on what‚" said Jeanette Hunter‚ deputy director-general of primary healthcare at the Department of Health.

She was speaking to the South African Human Rights Commission‚ which is probing the status of mental healthcare following the deaths of 143 mental-health patients who died after being moved from the Life Esidimeni facility to unlicensed nongovernmental organisations.

Hunter said there were some "definite areas of weakness" in the administration of care for the mentally ill.

She said it was important for the provinces to determine exactly what they were currently spending on mental-health services on all levels‚ to determine whether there was a funding gap affecting how all services were delivered.

Commission chair Bongani Majola questioned Hunter about what level of oversight the national department exercised over the provinces.

Hunter said they were thoroughly committed to their oversight role‚ but at times‚ "things did not work out as planned".

"At the moment‚ the fact that implementation in provinces does not happen the way that it should puts an extra burden on the national [department]‚ for them to step up and increase their monitoring role — to the extent that in some areas‚ [the national department] even becomes the implementation agent‚" Hunter told Majola. "We have neither the human resources nor the budget for that. So we [over]extend ourselves."

She stressed that while money was released by the Treasury for the care of mentally ill‚ the funds were not always used for this purpose.

"You find out that implementations are not happening at [provincial level]‚" Hunter said.

"It has happened that when we send money down [from the Treasury to the provinces]‚ it gets absorbed into areas that were not agreed upon. So now we have found a solution‚ where we ring-fence money to become conditional grants — which is a very onerous way of administrating resources."

Source: Business Day