As the Laetitia Bam Health Centre in KwaNobuhle remained closed at the weekend amid staff security concerns, the safety situation worsened when the lights outside stopped working.
A clinic committee comprising members of the community made the discovery when they went to inspect the facility at the weekend.
“The whole place was in darkness,” committee chair Lakhe Kona said on Sunday.
“We have been asking the department of health to see to the lights for a while but nothing was done,” he said.
“It is just the bulbs that need replacing, but they are not heeding our request.”
Health spokesperson Lwandile Sicwetsha said they were addressing the lighting situation inside the clinic, but the municipality was responsible for the outside lights.
Neither of the municipal spokespersons, Mthubanzi Mniki and Kupido Baron, could be reached for comment on Sunday evening.
Meanwhile, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) general secretary Anele Yawa will join Nelson Mandela Bay members of the organisation and the clinic committee at a high-level meeting about the continued operation of the clinic on Monday.
The chair of the security committee for the clinics in the area, Sipho Nyanga, said they would also join the meeting ahead of crucial feedback from the department on Thursday.Kona said the clinic had remained closed at night on weekdays last week despite a request from the TAC that the staff try to keep it open until 7pm.
He said residents had to go to the Uitenhage Provincial Hospital at the weekend to get medical assistance.
“It is expensive. You have to take two taxis to get there,” he said.
“I am relieved that I haven’t received any news of people dying because they couldn’t use the clinic.”
Clinic staff have refused since last week to work after 4pm and at weekends until the health department improves the security.
Their only forms of security at present are unarmed security guards and panic buttons that are not linked to an armed security service.
The drastic action followed a robbery at the clinic last Sunday, when security guards were held at gunpoint, tied up and robbed.
TAC Eastern Cape deputy chairperson Thembisile Nogampula said he believed police had since recovered a car with some of the items taken by the robbers.
Kona said as far as he was aware there had been no arrests yet for any of the violent incidents at the facility.
The robbery was the latest in a series of crimes at the clinic, which included the assault of a doctor and a gang barging inside to “finish off” a child whose arm they had broken.
Nogampula said they were also engaging with the staff to ensure that they were not being victimised by the health department over their decision.