Since last weekend, the hospital has been standing empty as all the personnel has left.
Although one half of the boom gate was closed when the Herald visited the hospital on Sunday, there was no security. All the equipment in the hospital was left behind, behind locked doors. According to the Special Investigating Unit’s (SIU) official report, R588,543,032 was spent on “up- grading” the infrastructure at the hospital to a facility where Covid-19 patients could get treatment. “The value of the contracts awarded for medical equipment supplies are R144,426,940,” the SIU found. This expensive equipment is now not being used and lying around, waiting to be stolen. As far as could be determined, the police and mine security currently keep an eye on the hospital in an unofficial capacity until the Department of Health (DOH) decides what to do further.
“It is unacceptable that so much money was spent, but now the place is left and not being used,” a whistleblower told the Herald. Last month, the DA’s Gauteng Shadow MEC for Health, Mr Jack Bloom, warned that the hospital could become a ghost hospital because the DOH had not decided what would happen to the personnel, whose contracts expired at the end of March. Bloom based his fears on the response he received in written and oral replies to his questions to the Gauteng Health MEC, Nomathemba Mokgethi in the Gauteng Legislature. Although the Gauteng Premier, Mr David Makhura, promised during the hospital’s opening in May last year that there are further plans for its use, none had come to light.
The spokesperson for the Gauteng DOH, Ms Kwara Kekana, also failed to answer the Herald’s questions on why the hospital was seemingly abandoned and its future purpose on Tuesday.
