Department Of Health Deleting Public Participation Emails
DearSA is aware that the Department of Health is allegedly deleting public participation inputs they received via email without reading them. A government department deleting public inputs without considering their contents is a grievous abuse of the public participation process. Fortunately, the DearSA platform exists to mitigate against this.
Once DearSA delivers comments to the relevant government department, we count and record all public participation through our platform. Therefore no comments or inputs can go missing. This allows DearSA to bring a legal challenge against the government if they abuse the public participation process.
“The deleted submissions pertain to the proposed regulatory amendments to the National Health Act. These regulations will perpetually and indefinitely extend the State of Disaster. DearSA’s mission is to enhance the transparency and efficiency of our democratic processes. Every submission sent via the DearSA platform is counted, tracked and delivered to the relevant government department. We also provide a complete summary once the campaign concludes. Because we retain a record of all public input, any government department that tries to obfuscate submissions or claims they never received them will fail in that regard. We will ensure no submission will be left behind, and that all voices will be heard on this issue.“ Said Gideon Joubert, DearSA CEO, on Tuesday.
As the Department has called for public comment, we encourage all active citizens to have their say via the link below. Public pressure creates a demonstrable impact. The voice of South African citizens is a powerful influence on the direction of our democracy.
Thus far we have delivered more than 217 000 comments to the Minister of Health. The period for comment on the proposed amendments to the National Health Act regulations closes on 16 April 2022.
