'Fight drug lords, not us'

2005-02-23 04:07

Pretoria - The Noupoort Christian Care Centre (NCCC) has appealed to the government to tackle drug lords rather than to close down a centre with a high success rate in rehabilitating addicts.

Lukie Carelsen of NCCC asked reporters outside Pretoria High Court on Tuesday: "Why does the government not join forces with us to fight drug abuse in this country, rather than close down successful centres?

"There are thousands of kids who should be dead now, but who got their lives back because of the centre."

He said: "And why do people queue to get into Noupoort while government centres are running empty? It's because we're successful.

Mismanagement, human rights abuses

Any responsible government would realise that it's in the interest of the country to keep the centre open, rather than to attack it."

The NCCC's urgent court application was dealt a blow on Tuesday when the judge warned the centre it continued "at its peril" if it did not respond to allegations of mismanagement and human rights abuses.

Its lawyers decided to supplement their papers and return to court on Thursday.

The Northern Cape drug rehabilitation centre launched the application to force the director-general of social development to grant a temporary registration certificate.

This would allow it to continue functioning while it tried to get Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya and his department to reverse their decision to close the centre.

Ongoing fight against drugs

In an affidavit before the court NCCC managing director, Sophocles Nissiotis, claimed his centre had an "unprecedented success rate" compared to any other rehabilitation centres.

He said its closure would not be in the public interest or the interest of the ongoing fight against drugs.

However, welfare services chief director Nomathemba Kela in an affidavit said the NCCC had been operating on an unsatisfactory basis since 1992 and had to be closed.

He accused the centre of trying to bully the department into giving it a temporary licence.

Since the centre opened in 1992 it had been operating on temporary licences. Last year it was informed it would get no more and should close its doors.

Termination of the programme

Kela emphasised that the department had taken great pains in considering the needs of patients.

However, Nissiotis said premature termination of the programme - which took eight to twelve months - would almost certainly result in relapse.

There were 68 patients at the centre, some of whom had just arrived, others who had been in the programme for 48 weeks.

The allegations of mismanagement and abuse came from a report before the court compiled by twelve experts.

It expressed serious concerns about the assessment and treatment of patients and also contained allegations of financial mismanagement and human rights abuses - in most cases by unqualified recovered addicts.

- SAPA