State of disaster: R300 million plan to move 46 hospitals to load shedding-free power lines

National Health Minister Joe Phaahla has outlined ambitious plans for 46 of the country’s hospitals to receive electricity from separate power supply lines under the newly declared National State of Disaster.

He was speaking at a multi government department briefing on the state of disaster regulations in Pretoria on Friday.

Phaahla explained this measure became necessary because cables supplying the 46 hospitals are intertwined with community supply lines and could, therefore, not be exempted from load shedding.

“Businesses, and so on, they can’t be separated. The hospitals have to have a separate line installed to be exempted from load shedding,” explained Phaahla.

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46 New hospital power lines at R300 million

Phaahla said the preliminary costing estimates came up to just over R300 million. He’s hoping the process to approve business plans and unlock funding will be expedited under the state of disaster.

After stage 6 load shedding became more frequent, Eskom agreed to exclude 213 hospitals from rolling blackouts due to the high levels of emergency cases these facilities deal with on a daily basis.

“This doesn’t mean that the rest are not priority,” emphasised the minister.

There are still 137 priority facilities that are affected by electricity rationing.

“Our teams are working with Eskom to look at exempting more facilities. 46 out of the remaining 137 fall under the Eskom direct supply line, with 91 under municipalities.”

The remaining 91 facilities will also need separate lines in the future. Phaahla is hoping the 46 hospitals will submit their business plans by June, the latest.

While there have been no patient deaths at hospitals as a result of load shedding, thanks to back up generators, Phaahla stressed the backups were taking strain under the prolonged outages.

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Real time audits and monthly accounting to Parliament

Several corruption-fatigued citizens and role players expressed dismay over state of disaster, with concerns that the declaration would just lead to another state-sponsored looting seen during the Covid-19 period.

Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma confirmed two court cases challenging the declaration had been filed.

But she insists government learned its lessons from the Covid-19 PPE corruption scandals. Dlamini-Zuma admitted the so-called ‘real time audits’ from Covid-19 procurements took place much later resulting in room to abuse procurement processes without the additional layer of checks and balances.

This time however, the auditing process governing fast tracked applications will be immediate, with additional monthly reporting to Parliament.

“Accounting officers will have to go to Parliament monthly on the work they have done and money they have spent. They will essentially be accounting to the public.

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‘We must reject stage 6’

Meanwhile, acting Eskom CEO Calib Cassim, who took over the reins from sacked former CEO André De Ruyter, called on South Africans to reject stage 6 load shedding.

He was responding to questions about whether load shedding would be increased for other customers if hospitals are being exempt.

“I think first and foremost the objective is to reduce the load shedding. Ultimately, we want the stages of load shedding to come down. Ideally, preference would be not to increase the hours of load shedding to the rest of the customer base,” he said.

He continued: “In doing so, the technical operator will do it in such a manner to protect the grid”.

Cassim emphasised that National Treasury’s R254 billion allocation to Eskom in this years budget would help the ailing parastatal release capex funds three years in advance, not only for generation, but for transmission and distribution.

“It means the long lead space that Thomas Conradie, acting head of generation at Eskom, needs to procure the resources that he needs to ensure that he delivers on the actual outage requirements, plus the flexibility that we now have on procurement in the governance rules, there should be no excuses from an Eskom perspective and a generation perspective on why we cannot see load shedding starting to be reduced going forward.”

“We must not accept stage 6, we need these stages to come down,” Cassim concluded.

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