JOHANNESBURG - Unions are joining calls for hospitals and medical facilities to be exempt from power cuts.
They say that the costs of electricity backups such as generators are eating into the already inadequate health budgets and disrupting emergency services.
The Public Servants Association says that many smaller clinics do not have any power alternatives available to them.
The PSA's Mlungisi Ndlovu said, "so you'll recall that most of the hospitals have generators, but those generators, to run the generator for four hours it means that they must move budget that was meant for conversations with workers and other critical services."
"So it affect them in a big way. It's affect negatively because not only hospitals, clinics do not have the generators and backup so the staff that work during night shift it affect them negatively. And also it has an impact because some of the staff that are supposed to report on time on duty, due to traffic and other thing it has those particular impacts."
"That's why we believe, as PSA in the province, that hospitals should be exempted from load shedding. They should have a plan because they deal with emergency services."
"What do you do when you have to run a generator for four hours? Even Eskom cannot be able to cope with that particular expense. [The] Department of Health need more funding to be able to employ contract workers, to be able to improve the infrastructure. But if they shift the budget allocated for those services it becomes a problem. So we as PSA, we are very concerned with this crisis."