In a series of tweets on its official account, @LASUTHikeja the management of LASU disclosed that it had been running solely on generators for five weeks and was forced to shut them down periodically in order to assure trouble-free operation.

It emphasized the importance of maintaining adequate care and service for patients, as well as prioritizing essential power supply to critical areas.

The LASUTH management, however, expressed hope that normality would return as soon as possible, despite their pleading with patients to bear with the situation.

The tweets read in part: “For the 5th week running, the Independent Power Project company had not supplied power to LASUTH. As a result, the hospital had been running on generators. In order to ensure hitch-free operations of the generators they have to be shut down times at intervals.

“During these times, which incidentally had been made as short as possible, some inconvenience is experienced by our patients.

“As a responsible hospital management, we have to keep our services running, hence we must necessarily prioritise supply to critical areas.

“We hope that normalcy will soon be restored but in the meantime, we appeal to our numerous patients to bear with us.

To improve power supply at LASUTH, the state government agreed in 2022 to purchase three new 500-kilovolt ampere power generating sets.

The generating plants were purchased to augment the power supply from Mainland Independent Power Project, which had been epileptic because of a shortage in the supply of gas needed for its turbines.

The generators have been running almost non-stop, forcing the health institution to rely on rationing power as a result of blackouts in recent years stemming from a perennial shortage of electricity supply.