On Monday afternoon, some of the windows at the hospital were broken, and a side door was standing open. Upon entering this ward, which still looked brand new, one could see severed electrical cables hanging from the ceiling. Heaps of stripped cable and some broken equipment also lay outside the hospital.
There are no security guards at the hospital, and the gate is standing open.
The Carletonville police confirmed that six cases of theft of infrastructure and equipment of more than R2 million had been opened regarding the theft at the abandoned hospital. The cases were all reported in just over a month.
The problems have arisen because no one currently takes responsibility for the hospital.
The government spent an exorbitant amount to “refurbish” the facility, which was still close to working condition, two years ago.
In papers filed with the Special Tribunal investigating corruption linked to tenders in Gauteng during Covid-19, the Special Investigative Unit called the tender process “flawed, unlawful and invalid. The process appeared to have been embarked upon without any consideration of the Treasury regulations and instruction notes”.
The Gauteng Department of Health, which wanted the hospital for a Covid-19 facility, had already vacated the hospital after they decommis- sioned it on 31 March.
When asked about the matter, the department’s spokesperson, Ms Kwara Kekana, again dodged accountability for the fiasco. She confirmed the previously-released information that the staff had already been redeployed to other facilities.
The Herald also asked Harmony Gold, the new owner of all AngloGold Ashanti’s South African assets, who was responsible for the hospital.
“Harmony has merely taken over Western Deep Levels Hospital’s lease agreement from AngloGold Ashanti as part of the acquisition of Mponeng in 2020. The lease was put in place with the Gauteng Department of Health and Gauteng Department of Infrastructure and Development (“the departments”) in response to the department’s calls to use mine hospitals during the Covid-19 pandemic. Harmony has made no financial contribution towards the Western Deep Levels Hospital,” says the company’s spokesperson, Mr Sihle Maake.
“The department has been fully responsible for the functioning, operational and staffing requirements of the Western Deep Levels Hospital near Carletonville. It should perhaps be noted that when the lease agreement was concluded, the Western Deep Levels Hospital was neither operational nor equipped. We understand that the department still had to do a lot of work to get the Western Deep Levels Hospital to an operational state,” he added.
The DA’s Shadow MEC for Infrastructure Development and Property Management in Gauteng, Mr Alan Fuchs, says the Gauteng Premier David Makhura and his MEC For Infrastructure Development, Tasneem Motara, are now scrambling to find a way to legalise the donation of the hospital. He says this was never done before spending millions on the now-abandoned facility.
