The city's essential NGO services for the most vulnerable children are being severely slashed and it's because the Gauteng Department of Health is failing to pay its outstanding electricity bills.

The lights have gone out at the Children's Memorial Institute (CMI) after City Power cut the power to the Braamfontein campus that houses 20 NGOs that provide for the city's most vulnerable special needs children.

This crisis comes in the wake of a staggering R41-million bill that the City of Joburg says it is owed. The CMI, as the umbrella entity for the NGOs and NPOs on site, is not the account holder - the Gauteng Department of Health is.

The department runs its laundries for the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital on the campus. This makes it the primary consumer of water and electricity on the site. But the dispute between City Power and the department over unpaid bills has dragged on for years.

While the department has been able to buy diesel to run its generators following the power cut, the NGOs don't have the luxury of huge reserve funds and have been forced to slash services.

This latest fiasco follows a similar dispute over outstanding water bills and three provincial departments - health, education and infrastructure and development - with overlapping responsibilities at the Braamfontein campus seemingly shirking from paying their mounting bills or taking meaningful action...