|
Power cuts to hit hospitals
29/02/2008 08:06 - (SA)
Johannesburg - Hospitals will not be protected from power cuts in the new load-shedding plan, contrary to an assurance given to Johannesburg Hospital by City Power.
Hospital chief executive Saggie Pillay said he was "surprised" by the information that his hospital would not be excluded from the load shedding.
"A couple of weeks ago, City Power gave us the reassurance that hospitals would be protected from power cuts", he said.
City Power's general manager of supply availability, Louis Pieterse, said that with the new system it was "extremely difficult" to exclude certain buildings like hospitals from the cuts.
He was speaking on Wednesday during the presentation of the new load-shedding plan.
In the new plan, which will be implemented from March 1 in the Johannesburg northwest area, where the hospital is situated, power cuts can be expected between 18:00 and 22:00.
Diesel costs R100 000 a month
City Power's director of engineering operation, Vally Padayachee, said the choice of a system in which hospitals were not excluded, had been a difficult decision.
"But since the hospitals now know when the load shedding could occur, they can plan appropriately. We believe it is not an insurmountable problem for hospitals," he said.
Pillay agreed on this, but said it would cause inconvenience to the patients, since no operations would be performed during the load shedding except for emergency operations.
"We have sufficient back-up power to deal with the power cuts, but only emergency operations would be performed in case there was a problem with the back-up power."
With the new load-shedding schedule, Pillay estimated the costs of diesel for the hospital generators to be about R100 000 a month.
The hospital had not been affected by load shedding since the reassurance to protect it from cuts was given by City Power.
"I hope they will respect the agreement we made," he said.
|
News
Power Crisis Special Report
