Conditions worsen at the Market Avenue Clinic

VEREENIGING. Barely weeks after Sedibeng Ster reported about the working conditions for security guards at the Market Avenue Clinic in Vereeniging the conditions have worsened.
Sedibeng Ster reported in our June 26 edition (Security guards use ‘dog-house’ as guard-room at Market Clinic) that the conditions that the security guards at the Emfuleni Local Municipality’s (ELM) Market Avenue Clinic in Vereeniging work in should make the MMC of Health at the Emfuleni Local Municipality ashamed that the clinic falls under the municipality.
Now, for the past week the clinic has been closing at 12:00 due to a lack of water as a result of water pressure challenges. It is said that nurses come in the morning, ‘do some work’ and then close the clinic’s doors.
“There is nothing that they can do when there is no water, water is life and in this situation it is needed for the clinic to fully operate. The can be no work here without a source of life, which is water,” a source said.
A notice on the glass doors of the clinic reads, “Due to health reason and hygiene , Market Avenue Clinic will be closed at 13h00 daily until the water pressure challenge is resolved.”
It is said that after 13:00 the nurses report either at the Department of Health in Houtkop, Sebokeng or at the Johan Heyns Clinic in Vanderbijlpark.
Earlier in June, Sedibeng Ster was invited to witness first-hand the ‘bad conditions at the clinic where guards, four in a shift, literally use a ‘dog-house’ (Wendy house) as a guard room. This is where they have to take cover during the hard winter conditions and when it rains. The ‘dog-house’ does not have electricity, and an electric extension has to be used to supply electricity from the main building. The guards have to use cell-phone lights when patrolling at night. When there is load-shedding there is apparently a generator that supplies electricity but it is at risk of being stolen because of insufficient lighting outside the clinic.
“Our lives are at risk here, please help us. There are serious medications that we are guarding here and under these difficult conditions it is impossible to do so. Look at this thing they call a guard-house, it is nothing but a house for dogs. We feel that Emfuleni does not care about us and its property, which is in turn the people’s property,” they said sternly.
The security guards had also said that they have reported all their problems to the sisters in charge at the clinic but that for a long time nothing has been done.
At the time of going to print Sedibeng Ster had still not received a response from ELM about the problems that employees face at the Market Avenue Clinic.