12 000 faults not fixed at 5 Gauteng hospitals

30 May 2016

More than 12 000 building faults at five Gauteng hospitals last year have not been fixed despite being reported on the e-maintenance programme run by the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development (GDID).

This is revealed in by GDID MEC Jacob Mamabolo in a written reply to my questions in the Gauteng Legislature.

According to Mamabolo, 33 134 faults were reported by the hospitals, but 12 257 of these have still not been repaired. The breakdown of unfixed problems is as follows:

Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital - 5396 

Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Hospital - 3319

Steve Biko Academic Hospital - 2356

Helen Joseph Hospital - 801

Tembisa - 485

Minor breakdowns are supposed to be fixed within 24 hours, major breakdownswithin 7 days and major refurbishment within one year.

But only 13 383 (40%) out of 33 134 reported problems in 2015 were fixedwithin 7 days and 20 877 (63%) within 30 days.

Mamabolo says that "there is a challenge to meet the mean time to repair due to delays in obtaining material." Other problems include a shortage of staff and the procurement process.

His department has now advertised a tender for 19 material suppliers and the Maintenance Unit is engaging with Supply Chain Management to speed up the process of appointing contractors.

It is shocking that so many maintenance problems take so long to be fixed using the e-maintenance system. It leads to a bad environment for staff and patients in our hospitals.

My view is that a centralized maintenance programme run by a separate department is likely to fail. Each hospital should rather do its own maintenance as used to happen previously.

Issued by Jack Bloom, DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Health, 30 May 2016