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Spending R50m on power plants is no guarantee they will keep working

EASTERN Cape health stakeholders yesterday expressed doubt over the Department of Health’s ability to manage a R50million emergency fund to buy generators and safeguard the power supply at some provincial hospitals.

The potentially life-saving allocation was announced by Finance MEC Billy Nel during his provincial budget speech on Friday, but he said tender details still had to be drafted before the generators could be bought.

The Treasury’s R50m response comes almost two years after four premature babies died at Cecilia Makiwane Hospital’s paediatric Intensive Care Unit in May 2006, when the ward’s generator failed to kick-in during a power outage.

The newborn babies died when the power failure effectively cut off their oxygen supplies.

Earlier this year, Frere Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit nurses spent four hours manually pumping oxygen into their patients’ lungs after the hospital’s generators failed to take over during a power outage.

This, the East London Hospital Complex had said, was a result of water contamination in the hospital generators’ diesel tanks.

National Education, Health and Allied Worker’s Union’s (Nehawu) provincial chairperson, Xolani Malamlela, voiced fears that the R50m would be “surrendered” before the generators were bought.

“The Health Department has a history of gross under-spending and surrendering money back to Treasury despite identified shortages,” Malamlela said.

He said poor management capacity, a lack of accountability and delivery and inadequate monitoring, could mean serious problems for hospitals until Eskom’s load-shedding policy ended in 2013.

The provincial Democratic Nursing Union was pleased with the allocation, but also expressed doubt over the department’s ability to implement the generator plan.

“It is our experience that they never carry their plans through. They always wait for lives to be lost before they act. If they pull this one off we will applaud them,” the union said.

Also voicing his doubts, Cosatu’s Eastern Cape secretary, Xola Phakati, said the intention was good but there was no capacity in the department to implement the strategy.

Phakati said if the department did not start beefing up its ability to spend resources allocated to it, the project would fail.

Daygan Eagar, health researcher at the Grahamstown-based lobby group, Public Service Accountability Monitor (Psam), said: “Generators are absolutely vital, but there have been instances of their failure to kick-in when required, due to maintenance issues.”

He said some kind of maintenance plan would have to be developed as a necessity.

Health portfolio committee chairperson, Mike Basopu, said the effectiveness of such a purchase would depend largely on existing power capacity, saying there were more challenges in power supply than the absence of generators.

“At Tafalofefe Hospital, for instance, there is a generator, but it does not kick in automatically when the power goes. Instead it requires manual starting,” he said.

Basopu said other hospitals reported poorly maintained and faulty generators. He called for a complete needs assessment of all hospitals before generators were bought.

Maintenance concerns were confirmed by Milton Thesen of Thesen’s Generators, who said generators needed monthly check-ups to ensure they effectively switched on during a power outage.

None of the health departments’ spokespersons could supply details surrounding the generator acquisition programme.