KWAZULU-NATAL Health MEC, Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu has voiced her unhappiness over the erratic functioning of lifts at Durban’s Addington Hospital.
The MEC wanted to know why the service provider, responsible for the servicing, repair and maintenance of the lifts, was unable to ensure that the lifts were always working, just like those at the many top hotels situated along the beachfront.
“It gives us an impression that as a Department, we are not a priority to this service provider,”she said.
The MEC’s question comes in the wake of a fire which broke out in the hospital last week.
“We thought it was necessary for us to come and see for ourselves what actually happened. The briefing that we received is that the fire started just outside the service lift, which was not working at the time and had not been working for a number of days. Unfortunately, the garbage that actually comes out of the wards is kept next to the service lift if it is not working. Now, that is where the fire came from,” she said.
On Tuesday, 2 July, scores of patients including newborn babies and children had to be evacuated from the 7th, 9th and 13th floors of hospital, after the fire started in a pile of garbage next to thhe service lift.
For quite some time, the 140 year-old hospital has been plagued by the malfunctioning of lifts, which has at times affected the movement of patients, staff, visitors as well as the delivery of food to patients, and removal of garbage.
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During a visit to the hospital, MEC Simelane-Zulu instructed senior management of the Department to act speedily to ensure and sustain the smooth functioning of the lifts.
“Of course, we are told this was not the first time in the hospital that they’ve had a fire. We have requested the Head of Department and senior management to investigate what led to the fire, because it’s a matter that we need to deal with. However, we understand that there are other underlying circumstances that are going to have to be dealt with by the Department. One of them is the fact that the lifts in this hospital are generally a problem, and there is one service provider that is giving us a shoddy service, to say the least,” said Simelane-Zulu.
“We are going to engage with that service provider and relook the contract and what can be done. We think they should be giving us the level of service that we are paying for. I know that the department engaged with the same service provider last year, and they committed to change their service and do things better, but that hasn’t happened. We are taking serious exception to that. We will do what needs to be done legally to get a proper level of service because the poor people who are using this hospital deserve better. There is no-one in this world who will walk up all those flights of stairs when they are sick, and we shouldn’t expect our people to undergo the same thing,” concluded the MEC.
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