KEMPTON HOSPITAL: a look inside the delapidated ‘haunted’ building
It could be cheaper to rather demolish the structure than to try and renovate it
HOPES of Kempton Park Hospital reopening are dwindling fast as the building is deteriorating day by day.
Jack Bloom, DA Gauteng MPL health spokesman, on Tuesday said the problem was that nothing had been budgeted in this year’s budget for the hospital, so there was at least another year’s delay.
“It also appears that the building has so deteriorated that it may be cheaper to demolish and rebuild entirely,” he said.
New health MEC, Qedani Mahlangu, has acknowledged the increase in need in the area for a local hospital but the wheels move very slowly in provincial government, Bloom said.
“I think that proposals should be called from the private sector for a mixed use development that includes a public hospital. It should be able to generate revenue and therefore assist with the costs of a new hospital.”
Tabling her department’s R31.5-billion budget for 2014/15 on Tuesday, Mahlangu said due to the growing population around Tembisa and the Johannesburg Inner City, they would review the decision to close Kempton Park and Hillbrow Hospitals.
Kempton Park Hospital, renamed Khaylami Hospital shortly before it closure, closed its doors 18 years ago on December 26, 1996. Most of the expensive equipment in the building was left behind. Today not much of it is left.
The last time Kempton Express reported about the hospital, was in August last year. Patricia Mokgohlwa, the then DA constituency head Tembisa and Kempton Park, then said the reopening had been delayed by two years and was scheduled to take place in 2017. She said it would become a level 1 district hospital.
It now seems nothing could come of this.
At the time ward councillor Jaco Terblanche said he was worried about the empty building.
“Provincial government pays over R800 000 a year to a private security company which allows people to do ‘ghost hunting’ on the premises over weekends. Many cars are parked along Miervreter Street on Saturdays as people disappear into the dark building for the night.”
He himself counted over 60 cars parked at the hospital over a weekend.
These ‘ghost tours’ against surfaced on radio stations this week. Bloom said these “tours” may come to an end soon as security was tightened up after the latest media on this matter.
He still believes it was a bad decision to have closed the hospital, because “it was underutilised”.
Also read:
The Kempton Park Haunted Hospital
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Video
Ghost hunting in an abandoned hospital by eNCA’s Judith Subban
