Cape Town - Four hospitals in the Western Cape have been exempted from load shedding, Health Minister Joe Phaahla said.
Phaahla named Groote Schuur, Tygerberg, Red Cross and George Regional hospitals as part of the 76 health facilities exempted from load shedding since September 2022.
He was responding to parliamentary questions from Freedom Front MP Philip van Staden, who asked whether all government hospitals and clinics in each province were exempt from load shedding in the current Eskom crisis.
Van Staden also asked for the names of the hospitals and clinics in each province that were still not exempt from load shedding and the measures being put in place to ensure that all state and provincial hospitals and clinics were exempt from load shedding.
Phaahla said not all government facilities had been exempted from power cuts.
He said the national Department of Health has provided Eskom with a total of 213 hospitals to be considered for possible exclusion from load shedding.
“About 67% of these hospitals are supplied by municipalities while Eskom supplies about 33% of the identified hospitals.
“Out of the 213 hospitals, 76 hospitals have been exempted of which 26 are directly supplied by Eskom and 50 by municipalities,” Phaahla said.
“The number of hospitals exempted to date have doubled since the meeting held on 22 September, 2022 between Eskom and national Department of Health,” he added.
KwaZulu-Natal has 15 hospitals exempted from load shedding, followed by Free State and Gauteng with 14 each.
Limpopo has nine exempted hospitals, Eastern Cape seven, Northern Cape five, and Mpumalanga four.
Phaahla said clinics and community health centres were going to be covered within the solar energy roll-out programme.
“The National Department of Health in partnership with CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) is currently conducting a due diligent exercise for the installation of solar panels at all our health facilities,” he said.
Cape Times