CEO: Blackouts costing hospital thousands of kina

National, Normal
Source:

The National, Thursday October 10th, 2013

 CONSTANT power disruptions in Vanimo town, West Sepik, have forced the hospital there to use its standby generator, costing more than K11,000 a week.

Hospital chief executive Elias Kapavore said since last week  blackouts in the town had caused financial problems for the hospital.

“A drum of fuel in Vanimo costs more than K1,000 and our standby generator is supposed to be operating for four to five hours, not eight hours,” Kapavore  said

“Two thousand kina each day starting from last week is a problem.

“We would like PNG Power to look into this problem and fix it immediately.” Kapavore said it was not in the hospital’s budget to spend that much on fuel and he was unhappy with the service provided by PNG Power.

Constant outages from 6am to 7pm meant technical problems as well.

There are three medical officers from the Port Moresby General Hospital in Vanimo Hospital for a week.