/ 20 May 2010

Power restored to Baragwanath hospital

Power supply to the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto was restored late on Wednesday night, the Gauteng health department said.

The hospital had been without electricity for the past two days due to cable theft, spokesperson Mandla Sidu said in a statement.

Hospital management had to reschedule some elective surgeries and ambulances had to be diverted to other hospitals.

“I am delighted that the situation has been resolved and that no fatalities or adverse incidents have occurred as a result of this criminal act,” provincial health minister Qedani Mahlangu said in the statement.

Sidu clarified earlier reports that the outage had been caused by cash flow problems, saying that the initial outage was caused by cable theft, and subsequently there hadn’t been enough money to pay for diesel to power the generators.

Mahlangu earlier told a press briefing: “What would have happened is that … because we were owing a lot of service providers from the end of the last financial year, treasury said our quota for this financial year is done.

“That’s why the service providers have not been paid. This is just about a cash-flow issue between treasury and ourselves.” — Sapa