The Office of the Public Utilities ( OPU) in Ondo State affirms it has concluded plans to power the 23 general hospitals in the state with solar energy.
This was revealed by the Administrative Secretary of the OPU, Princess Abike Bayo-Ilawole, during a meeting with heads of general hospitals and other major stakeholders on alternative energy for the state-owned hospitals on Monday in Akure.
“The Office of the Public Utilities, observed that in this post-fuel subsidy removal era, people want to find ways of making things easy for themselves and the state government wants to make life easy for people.
“So, the state general hospitals have canceled payment for hospitals registration cards and reduced some of the costs that may be putting agony on the citizens.
“We are now looking at activities of the administrators of those facilities and we observed that the hospitals are always in the dark, especially at night.
Even during the day, they are stuffy and they can’t keep some basic items that are needed to be frozen. At this level, we saw the need to come together and work. We have the human resources.
“We realized that some hospitals already have little solar facilities and we need to improve them and give to those that do not have them.
“Our office will train their officials on how to handle minor issues on installed solar facilities and they can call us when they have major issues with their solar system,” she asserted.
Meanwhile, Bayo-Ilawole promised the health facility managers that the solar system, when installed, would last long and be highly effective.
“I can assure you that it will last long. Solar energy is easiest to maintain and we will give to individual hospitals according to their needs,” she said.
