The Gauteng Department of Health said 11 hospitals were still unreachable because of disputes with Telkom but that it had reduced its bills “significantly” – and was migrating to a new system to cut future costs.
Spokesperson Motalatale Modiba said among the 11 were major institutions like Chris Hani Baragwanath, Charlotte Maxeke and Steve Biko Academic Hospital.
He told News24 the department had “processed the current invoices for payment before the end of this week”, despite the fact that its dispute “in relation to identified discrepancies still stands”.
The department was migrating facilities to the Gauteng Provincial Voice Network system operated by the eGovernment Department, added, with the new service expected to slash costs of internal and external communication.
DA provincial health spokesperson Jack Bloom said the outages more than five weeks ago had a huge impact on internal communications and severely affected numerous patients and their families.
He attributed the issue to a lack of funds.
“I suspect they have simply run out of money towards the end of the financial year on 31 March. An astounding R2.275bn overspend is projected, despite them not meeting key targets, including poor ambulance response times and low child immunisation.”
However, Modiba denied that the phone line issue had anything to do with the department’s coffers.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Gauteng hospital phone lines cut over payment dispute
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Telkom cuts services to Gauteng Health offices over non-payment