The hospital has been standing empty since last weekend, after all personnel left. Expensive equipment in the hospital was left behind locked doors.

When the Carletonville Herald visited the hospital on Sunday, there was no security present. One boom at the hospital entrance was closed, the other open.

According to the Special Investigating Unit’s (SIU) official report, R588,543,032 was spent on ‘upgrading’ infrastructure at the hospital to a facility where Covid-19 patients could get treatment.

“The value of the contracts awarded for medical equipment supplies are R144,426,940,” the SIU found.

This expensive equipment is currently lying around unused and vulnerable to theft due to the absence of visible security. The hospital’s lights were left on.

As far as could be established, the police and mine security are currently keeping an eye on the hospital in an unofficial capacity, until the Department of Health (DOH) decides on the road ahead.

“It is unacceptable that so much money was spent, but now the place is not being used,” a whistleblower told the paper.

Last month, the DA’s Gauteng Shadow MEC of Health, Jack Bloom, warned that the hospital could become a ghost hospital because the DOH had not decided what would happen to the personnel, whose contracts expired at the end of March.

Bloom based his fears on the response he received in written and oral replies to his questions to the Gauteng Health MEC, Nomathemba Mokgethi, in the Gauteng Legislature.

Although the Gauteng Premier David Makhura, promised that there are further plans for its use during the hospital’s opening in May last year, none had come to light.

The spokesperson for the Gauteng DOH, Kwara Kekana, failed to answer the newspaper’s questions on why the hospital was seemingly abandoned and its future purpose.