Limpopo Health MEC, Dr Phophi Ramathuba is calling on community members who might be having information to assist the police to swiftly apprehend suspects who hijacked a Toyota Quantum Ambulance on the night of 26 February 2020, at Strydkraal in the Nchabeleng area.
The ambulance was returning to the Nchabeleng EMS Station after dropping a patient at Jane Furse Hospital.
It was later found stripped for parts at Ga Masemola in the early hours of this morning. Crew members were also recovered safe but robbed of their cellphones.
“It is quite unfathomable how a sane person can target such a valuable and sensitive community resource like an ambulance. Doesn’t anyone care that a community member, a relative or even a parent or sibling can lose their lives due to non-availability of an ambulance because the one available has been hijacked and stripped for parts? What have we become as a society? We are pleading with anyone who might know something to come forward and assist the police so that the suspects can be arrested,” said MEC Ramathuba.
Crime has become the number one risk to the delivery of quality healthcare in this country. Annually, the department procures 50 ambulances to beef up its fleet, but the impact is minimal due to theft and hijacking. “If it is not theft or hijacking of ambulances, it is nurses and guards at clinics who are targeted by these criminals which then thwarts our effort to render effective 24-hour services,” says MEC Ramathuba.
The MEC has sent out well wishes to the crew and they will be taken for counselling this morning.
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