“It is very cold to go there now, especially for old and sick people. There is no air conditioning because the clinic does not have electricity,” says one of the residents, Mr Jacob Gumede. According to him, the problems already started at the end of last year. Community members were told that the clinic needs its own transformer to separate its electricity supply from that of the neighbouring houses. There are often electricity problems in this area and Eskom usually takes very long to attend to them because most residents do not pay for their services. “We heard that they had started putting new wiring in the clinic. The work was not completed, however, and we believe that another tender is now out,” says Gumede. The clinic currently uses a generator, but the residents say they only run for a few hours at a time to do essential work like running the fridges. When it is switched off, the personnel have to take the medication to another clinic to be stored until the generator is switched on again. The Herald took the community’s concerns to the Department of Health in the West Rand. “The Department of Health acknowledges with deep concern the crisis with the electricity supply at Khutsong Ext. 3’s PHC clinic in the township. “The current disruption of elec- tricity supply involves both the community and the clinic as the local electricity transformer/sub- station has been disabled due to illegal connections. “The clinic is currently and intermittently using a standby diesel generator to ensure continued service delivery and the Department of Health, in partnership with the Department of Infrastructure Development, is currently engaging stakeholders in seeking long-term electricity supply solutions at Khut-song Ext. 3 clinic and other chal-lenging infrastructure-related issues at Khutsong Community Healthcare Centre (CHC),” the district communication officer, Ms Nomagugu Hloma, answered. 
