Important info lost in CBD blaze

Health department loses case files

Critical documentation relating to litigation against the Gauteng department of health burnt during the fire at the Bank of Lisbon (BOL) building in the Johannesburg CBD on Wednesday.

This was revealed in an urgent meeting called by the portfolio committee on health in the Gauteng legislature yesterday.

BOL housed three Gauteng provincial departments – health; human settlements; and cooperative governance and traditional affairs.

CFO of the Gauteng health department Kabelo Lehloenya told the committee that while data stored on computers survived the fire, printed documents went up in smoke.

“In terms of data lost on hard copies, we have suffered a massive blow. That I must concede to. Even in my office as the CFO, we had a lot of documents, [so did the] HOD, we had a lot of hard copies there. We sign memos almost on a daily basis,”Lehloenya said.

“That information indeed has been lost. I just want to state to the members that you only have the office of the head of legal that is stationed at BOL. Processing and directors and everybody else are all stationed at [the building on] Diagonal Street. A lot of the files are still there but indeed we did lose quite a good number of files, and those files that have been lost at BOL are of critical cases because obviously the files that would be at the head of legal would be important files.”

The committee called the officials of the department to get first-hand information as to what plans it had to ensure that the public does not suffer because of the building that went up in smoke.

On Thursday, firefighters were still extinguishing the blaze which had caused havoc to traffic and forced other buildings to evacuate their employees.

Meanwhile, the South African National Defence Force has made available firefighting trucks and a helicopter to assist to extinguish the blaze, the SANDF said in a statement on Thursday night.

“... the SA Air Force has since authorised the deployment of five fire-fighting trucks to assist the Joburg Emergency Services with extinguishing the fire... A South African Air Force Oryx helicopter has been placed on standby for aerial fire-bombing and visual reconnaissance‚” the SANDF said in a statement.