The power supply to St. Anne’s Hospital in Damongo, Savannah region, has been restored after Samuel Abdulai Jinapor, the area’s MP and Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, settled part of their debt with NEDCo.
The hospital owed NEDCo over 4 million Ghana cedis for electricity consumption, which led to a power cut by the company last week.
The power outage caused two babies to die and three others to be in critical condition at the hospital, as reported by Citi News.
According to Dr. Gbeadese Ahmed, who is in charge of communications and clinical coordination at the hospital, they could not access blood from the Blood Bank or conduct compatibility tests for transfusions due to lack of power.
However, Maxwell Kotoka, NEDCo’s corporate communications manager, justified their action of disconnecting the hospital, saying that they had given prior notice and asked them to make arrangements if they had any difficulty paying their bills.
He said that the hospital did not engage with NEDCo despite owing them GH¢4.8 million.
“They needed the power which is so critical to their operation; where they have challenges, they should have engaged us, but they didn’t do that. And I heard them say that they owe GH¢4 million; they actually owe us GH¢4.8 million; and before we embarked on the disconnection, we made a public announcement that we were coming and said if you have any difficulty, you should take advantage of the notice before we get there,” Mr. Kotoka told Umaru Sanda Amadu.
The intervention of Mr. Jinapor came after a meeting between him, Savannah Regional Minister Saeed Muhazu Jibril, NEDCo officials, regional health directorate and hospital management on Monday.
Mr. Jibril said that they would make part payment of the debt on behalf of the hospital on Tuesday.
He also said that they would look into ways to prevent such a situation from happening again in future.
