Completion of Rob Ferreira Hospital laundry is set

In the past years the department had made promises regarding the dates on which the hospital would get a washroom, but there were delays. This dates back as far as two years.

Department spokesman, Dumisani Malamule, said the laundry will finally be operational by the end of March 2019.

Various concerns have been raised by patients and the community. They sometimes allegedly have to cancel surgeries due to insufficient linen, and some patients have raised concerns about their linen not being changed.

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Others said they had to bring their own clean linen from home. The Department of Health denied these allegations.
In 2017 Malamule told Lowvelder that the laundry will operational by March. This was announced by the former health MEC, Gillion Mashego, at the legislature’s oral reply session.

At the time his statement was contrary to a previous reply, which stated that it would be completed in December 2017.

This week Malamule said there are people currently working on preparing the area.
“The laundry is almost done. The only issue causing delays is the plumbing in the area. As we speak the plumbers have already started fixing the pipes and then the equipment will be placed in the laundry room,” he said.
In 2017 they said the cause of the delay was related to the service providers and later they said they got a service provider.

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The area earmarked for the new laundry is located on the lower ground floor of the nurses’ quarters at the hospital.

Last year November, Malamule confirmed that engineers had declared the building unsafe and in need of renovations. When the newspaper visited the hospital there were constructors working on the building, although the area which is to be used still looks like a storage room. In December 2018 the department said it is now 95 per cent complete.

At the moment the three 36-kilogram laundry machines and two driers acquired for the laundry are stored in the adjacent doctors’ quarters.

Malamule said the hospital spends approximately R25 000 per month on fuel for transporting the dirty linen to other hospitals to have it cleaned and dried. In Rob Ferreira, there are about 461 beds with five pieces of linen each.