UNITED Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH) is appealing for assistance to help victims of fire that gutted one of the hospital’s staff hostels on Sunday.
Blondie Ndebele
The cause of the fire that destroyed property worth millions of dollars at Robbie Gibson Infections Diseases Hospital is yet to be established.
UBH acting chief executive officer Narcisius Dzvanga said there were about eight families that lost virtually all their property and they were appealing to the public, corporate organisations and the government to assist with financial and material resources.
“About 20 families are now housed at Elangeni Training Institute, with the assistance of the governor’s office,” he said.
Dzvanga said some of the affected people have gone to stay with relatives.
“We are kindly appealing to well-wishers to assist with food, clothes, blankets and other items because these people were left with absolutely nothing,” he said.
“We have no capacity as a hospital to provide for all those families.”
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Dzvanga said they had since approached the Civil Protection Unit and other organisations to assist the victims of the inferno. “We believe this is a humanitarian crisis that has occurred at an institution that has few resources,” he said.
“They cannot be kept at Elangeni forever and we need assistance so that they can start a new life.”
Dzvanga said they were waiting for investigations from the fire brigade and were not blaming anyone for the incident.
“We are waiting for the fire brigade to do their work professionally and we will not place blame on anyone,” he said.
Bulawayo City Council chief fire officer Richard Peterson said they were still investigating the incident.
“We still can’t locate the people who stayed where the fire is said to have started and investigations are still going on,” he added.
