The Care Haven Psychiatric Centre is not asking for a handout. It is asking the Eastern Cape government to honour a commitment it has kept for 34 years. This small nonprofit in central Gqeberha houses 59 people with severe mental illnesses, many of them elderly, frail and abandoned by family and society.
For them, Care Haven is not a facility. It is their home. The home is on the brink of collapse because the Eastern Cape health department has abruptly stopped paying a long-standing monthly subsidy of R145,000.
The result is predictable. Staff have gone unpaid. The centre has exhausted its reserves.
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Loans and donations are being used to keep residents fed and cared for. Repeated attempts by Care Haven’s management to engage with officials since June have gone unanswered. A formal letter of demand drew no response.
Now they are forced to go to court. The certificate of urgency and the court papers setting out the home’s plight were filed on December 12. The Eastern Cape health department, its head of department, the provincial treasury and the MEC for finance, economic development, environmental affairs and tourism have been cited as respondents. With the money not coming in, residents of the care home face the prospect of being turned out onto the streets, while the centre’s 31 workers are at risk of losing their jobs.
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