Home Scrutator That gong is yours to keep

That gong is yours to keep

by Lesotho Times
0 comment 146 views

Scrutator is shocked that the powers that be have all along expected the country’s only referral hospital to do so much with so little.

With a short supply of everything from bandages to electricity it is a miracle that the hospital is not producing more dead bodies than cured people.

In the absence of functional diagnostic equipment I wonder how the doctors at that hospital come to make concrete conclusions on the sick or injured without the aid of requisite technology.

Scrutator strongly suspects that from time to time some of the diagnosis reached by the doctors and nurses at Queen II are, to put it mildly, far away from the truth.

It is immoral for trained health practitioners to run a whole referral hospital on the basis of guess work.

In fact I don’t think that that hospital should be employing any physicians or surgeons at all given that most of them have to literally cast lots when diagnosing patients.

The best way to go is for the government hospital to engage the more appropriate services of magicians and prophets who will find the environment at the referral centre perfect for their kind of practice.

Those guys do not need aspirin or paracetamol when dealing with the sick or injured.

Their practice does not depend on the availability of electricity to power diagnostic machinery.

Magicians do not need the CT-scan or the intensive care unit for emergency cases.

That is why they are called magicians. They practice magic.

But medical issues are matters of life and death not magic.

Scrutator is aware that the Hippocratic Oath, to which every modern day doctor has sworn allegiance to, does not allow medical practitioners to put the lives of patients at risk — especially when such an act is deliberate and avoidable.

I am not sure if what the doctors at that hospital are doing is in keeping with the oath that each one of them took upon leaving medical school.

What happened to “keeping the good of the patient as the highest priority”?

In a country where the incidences of road traffic accidents, shootings and HIV and Aids are so high who needs a pillaged shrine for a referral hospital?

 

No amount of kicking, screaming from MISA Lesotho will persuade Scrutator to reverse last week’s decision to award them the mediocrity trophy for 2008.

I will not change that decision, not in a thousand years. 

The mediocrity gong is for MISA to keep.

Because they won by a very huge margin, Scrutator is actually tempted to suspend the whole competition this year to give other journos a chance to meet those lofty standards set by MISA for the year 2008. 

The reason is that what the organisation achieved in just 12 months other journos will actually need 24 months or more to do.

This is my award and I give it to whoever I judge to deserve it.

Not even the recipients can protest against my decision because it is a culmination of a long process of meticulous adjudication.

Misa Lesotho should just keep the silverware until some more innovative scribe does the extraordinary and beat them to it next time.

Scrutator was not there when that scandal of a report was stitched up.

I was not at Mohale Lodge when MISA decided to include those primitive ideas in their instalment to the regional publication that is now the laughing stock of the media fraternity south of the Sahara.

Even a sadist would enjoy a practical joke like that one. 

What Scrutator wrote was only a pinch of a report that is in fact overflowing with gaffes, blunders, half truths and plainly ridiculous statements that were printed on expensive paper to give the impression that they were ideas worth publishing.

It will only take just another little sound of protest from someone for me to offload the rest of the hogwash in that report.

In the meantime MISA Lesotho should lock the mediocrity trophy in a strong safe because the competition is likely to be getting stiffer.

Perhaps the most credible threat came from a certain sports reporter who was recently in the news celebrating his invitation to a Fifa training workshop for journalists in Johannesburg.

The story in another weekly paper last week shocked even Scrutator’s mother in Qacha’s Nek.

A fellow reporter was dragged to write the story announcing this “achievement” to all and sundry.

For a moment I thought this was some prestigious award until it dawned on me that this was just one of those all-expenses-paid workshops that Fifa has been running across the continent for years now. 

Since when has attending a training workshop become a journalistic achievement? When did that become news?

And when did it become something that a journalist should bloat about? 

It’s a shocking scandal that the bunkum found its way into a national paper. But that was not the only sad part of the report.

We were told by the reporter, with a straight face, that this was an achievement for Lesotho as well.

Can someone hand me a hankie, I am so embarrassed I can’t hold back my tears.

For those not in the know, you don’t need to be good at anything to attend a Fifa workshop especially those that relate to the World Cup.

There is no merit assessment that goes on at those meetings besides the usual PR rituals by the soccer body ahead of a major soccer tourney.

At best everyone will get a certificate of attendance.

You may also like

About Us

Lesotho’s widely read newspaper, published every Thursday and distributed throughout the country and in some parts of South Africa. Contact us today: News: editor@lestimes.co.ls 

Advertising: marketing@lestimes.co.ls 

Telephone: +266 2231 5356

Recent Articles