The electricity supply for the Sri Lanka’s main children’s hospital , The Lady Ridgeway has been disconnected today (26) without any prior notice, hospital sources said. The Electricity Board has disconnected the supply due to non-payment of electricity bill for three months.
He said that the patients and the hospital staff members were in a trouble due to the disruption of several sections of the hospital including the canteen of the hospital due to the power cut.
He pointed out that it is a great injustice to disconnect the electricity without prior notice due to the delay in the payment of 30 million rupees for the month of June, July and August.
However, a few hours after the electricity was cut off, the electricity bill was paid 16 million, the spokesman said.
He said that in June and July last, they received an electricity bill of 16 million rupees each, but in August, the hospital’s electricity bill was 13 million rupees.
The spokesperson said that this is the warning that the electricity board will cut off the electricity in the hospital if the payment of the electricity bill is delayed.
When we asked the Deputy Director of the hospital, Dr. Santhush Senapati about this, he mentioned that this is a very serious matter, even though the disconnected electricity will be restored after paying a part of the bill.
Even though the provision given by the government is not increased, due to the increase in hospital treatment services and the increase in the electricity bill, the hospital will have to pay a large electricity bill in the future.
However, Dr. Santhush states that other government institutions should be responsible in dealing with the lives of sick children.
However, he pointed out that more than 1000 pediatric patients come for treatment daily, 600 inpatients are treated daily, and a large number of serious and general surgeries are performed daily, so it is the duty of the responsible groups to pay more attention to this hospital.
