DA proposes solutions to Charlotte Maxeke hospital parking crisis

On Friday last week I visited the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Hospital to assess the parking crisis and the broken telephone switchboard which are causing great distress to staff and patients.

I was accompanied by DA Clr Chloe Homer, and we spoke to officials in the CEO’s office.

They said that the switchboard’s PABX had been damaged by load-shedding on Tuesday 12 July and the supplier was supposed to come on Monday to fix it.

I expressed concern that alternative telephone numbers were not widely publicised, and that when I phoned the number given, I was told it was only for emergencies and they could not put me through departments.

They said that the telephone operator should have taken a message for the correct person to phone back and promised to brief them better.

The parking crisis has been ongoing ever since the hospital partially reopened after the fire last year. We saw how cars are jam-packed for long distances from the hospital, which causes great problems for staff and for sick patients.

See pictures here, here, and here.

I noticed that parking at the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital (NMCH) and at the provincially owned Emfuleni conference centre were both largely empty.

They are opposite the road from the hospital and can provide badly needed extra parking.

The CEO’s office staff said that they had tried to use the NMCH parking but had limited success.

The provincial government should be using its leverage with NMCH as it receives government funding, and it should be easy to open Emoyeni’s parking lot.

The best solution would obviously be the speedy repair of the hospital’s basement parking. According to a presentation to the Gauteng Legislature’s Health Committee earlier this year “temporary access and temporary parking” was scheduled for June to July, and additional parking from July to October this year, but we did not see evidence of this.

The DA will continue to press for speedier completion of repairs to the hospital, as well as better arrangements for parking in the interim.