Recent experience with almost month-long power cuts in South Africa due to inadequate generation capacity have highlighted a State-owned entity has been unable to ensure a reliable source of electricity to the country for over a decade. When this first occurred in 2008, I was heading the Western Cape Department of Health and as management we had urgent meetings with officials from the power utility to decide how to manage what was envisaged then to be a short-term problem. At that time many health facilities had inadequate or no back-up generators and a decision was taken and actioned urgently to acquire and install generators at as many facilities as fast…
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Winter of discontent … again!
My first post on my health blog on 13th July 2020 had the title. “Winter of discontent”. I am again posting a piece with the same title as on that date. The country has since emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, which in July 2020 was still new to our experiences but dragged on with questionable measures taken by government over the subsequent almost two years with disastrous consequences for the lives of so many South Africans. At that time the country had experienced euphemistically termed “load shedding” but more aptly the failure of a vital state entity ESCOM to provide enough electricity to keep the wheels of industry turning and…