Power restored to Johannesburg children’s complex after 20 days — Daily Maverick
In Johannesburg, South Africa, electricity supply to the Children’s Memorial Institute complex in Parktown was restored on September 22 after a 20-day outage. According to Daily Maverick, the power was cut off on September 3 because provincial authorities had accumulated 159.2 million rand in utility debt.
Despite the restoration of electricity, the complex’s management and representatives of non-governmental organizations say they have received no formal guarantees against another disconnection. Children’s Memorial Institute chair Claudine Ribeiro said the institutions also fear a possible water supply cut-off.
Consequences of the outage
Twenty-two non-governmental organizations working with children and 365 pupils at the Johannesburg School for Autism were left without electricity. At the Children’s Memorial Institute’s pediatric dental clinic, doctors were forced to provide emergency care to patients with acute pain and injuries using mobile phone flashlights.
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The hospital laundry on the complex’s premises operated on backup generators, consuming about 1,000 liters of diesel per day. Fuel costs exceeded 30,000 rand daily. The laundry supplies sterile linen to Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital, two other hospitals and 13 clinics.
Debt dispute
According to the publication, Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero publicly promised to restore electricity during a visit to the complex on September 16. The following day, City Power representatives demanded a signed acknowledgment of debt and a payment agreement from the Gauteng Department of Health, which delayed the restoration of electricity.
The complex, founded in 1923 as a memorial to children who died during World War I, brings together medical institutions and community organizations, including Childline, the Teddy Bear Foundation and the Johannesburg Parent and Child Counselling Centre. Two High Court rulings required the relevant Gauteng government departments to settle the allocation of internal utility bills, but no formal intergovernmental agreement has yet been reached.
