Gauteng hospital subject of SIU probe after R500 million ‘goes to waste’

A Gauteng hospital that received some R500 million worth of funding in order to equip it with extra beds and facilities to treat COVID-19 patients has yet to be completed, and upon inspection was found to be completely un-operational since renovation work commenced in April 2019. 

The AngloGold Ashanti hospital on the far West Rand received the funding to remodel it with 176 highcare/ICU beds for acute COVID-19 cases, but so far only 56 beds have been installed amid strikes by contractors whose payment arrangements with the Gauteng Department of Health have been put on hold pending the outcome of a Special Investigating Unit (SIU) probe into alleged corruption. 

Gauteng hospital ‘unlikely to treat a single COVID-19 patient’  

Democratic Alliance (DA) Councillors Blackie Zwart and Alme Rowles-Zwart paid the hospital a visit last week and were less than impressed by what they found. 

“They found it closed with a number of completed wards but mostly unfinished construction. The completed areas had no equipment and there was no indication that the hospital will be ready for use anytime soon,” said DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Health s Jack Bloom.

He said that the hospital was in “reasonable condition when it was handed over to contractors, but that it has since fallen into disrepair and is now “unlikely to treat a single COVID-19 patient”. 

He also said that the hospital is difficult to access at its location in the Western Deep Level mine midway between Carletonville and Fochville.

DA demand probe into misuse of funds  

Bloom is demanding that a comprehensive investigation is completed in order to reveal how and where the R500 million was spent, and claimed that an official at the hospital admitted at a meeting of the Gauteng Legislature’s Health Committee that “it would have been cheaper to build the hospital from scratch”.

“We need to know why so much money was allocated for a hospital that is doomed to be a white elephant as it is so far from major urban centres,” he said. 

“This is a colossal misuse of money that could have been spent at other hospitals to assist them in treating the rapidly escalating COVID-19 cases, some of whom will need high care or ICU beds.”