HIV advocacy organisation Positive Life SA will be forced to shut its doors in July because its State Government funding has been cut.
The group has been funded for the past six years but SA Health has now awarded the service contract to a partnership between the Victorian AIDS Council and SHine SA.
Positive Life SA executive officer Rob O’Brien said five staff and 23 volunteers would be out of work when the funding ceased.
The organisation represents up to 1,200 people who are HIV positive.
“The people that we have here trust us, they know us, we know them. That’s going to be fairly irreplaceable certainly in the short term,” Mr O’Brien said.
“People who have said, ‘it’s taken me many years to trust you mob, now I have to go and do it for another organisation and I just won’t’.”
SA Health chief medical officer Paddy Phillips said he was sorry Positive Life was unsuccessful in receiving a new contract but said proper processes had been followed.
“Our aim is to get the best possible service for the best possible value,” Mr Phillips said.
He said there was a plan to transition from Positive Life to the new providers.
Dignity for Disability representative and SA MLC Kelly Vincent told Parliament that Positive Life SA was a more local option than the successful bidder.
“On the outset it is not to say the Victorian Council does not do a good job, but they certainly do not seem to be local,” she said.
“They don’t appear to be community based in the same way that Positive Life has been to date,” Ms Vincent said.