Image from Google Images.
On Friday July 27, 2012 Wits Vuvuzela published a story stating Diamond House had empty first aid kits. Ndumiso Davidson, chief operating officer, said South Point disputed this issue. He said the keys to the kit are kept with the building manager who is contacted in case of an emergency.
“The day before the article the first aid boxes were inspected as part of a formal building inspection process and were found to be fully compliant, this is stated in building inspection reports,” said Davidson.
However the Wits Vuvuzela reporter says he saw the first aid kits “empty”.
Davidson also said the headline “Still no hot water at Norvic” from Wits Vuvuzela’s previous edition [Friday August 31 2012] was misleading.
He said the headline made it seem as though students did not have water from the beginning of the year. He said students did not have hot water on two occasions.
The first was during the installation of heat pumps and the second was when South Point decided to revert to the old system because the heat pumps were not meeting the building’s capacity, which took 18 hours to fix.
He said most students paid their rent on time “but South Point spends a considerable amount of time chasing money from students who have no intention to pay and want to find excuses for non-payment”.
Davidson said: “If we don’t receive our rental on time we will not be able to pay for electricity, water and the lift company to fix the broken lifts.”
Diamond House students had also complained about hot water problems. They said some floors in their building did not have hot water while other floors had hot water. Davison said this was due to two pressure valves that bust on the boiler and water could not be pumped all the way to the top floors.
“This is an unforeseen and unplanned occurrence. This was fixed permanently within a week,” said Davidson.
Davidson said they try to work on a two to three day turnaround time but sometimes they rely on external service providers and this can cause a delay.
Davidson said: “It’s important to note the security, water and electricity have red status at South Point. This means that they have the highest priority from our maintenance team and therefore the shortest possible response times and often the Chief Operating Officer and/or CEO is engaged with resolving the issues as soon as is humanly possible.”
Published in 24th Edition September 14, 2012