St. Mary's Hospital enterance.[Photo/nation]
Mr Joesph Ng'era a Nakuru businessman has gone to court to end the lengthened tussle over the ownership of St Mary's Hospitals.
He donated 58 acres of land at Elementaita in Nakuru where one of the hospitals is located and his move to the court was to end the suffering of the patients due to the service paralysis at the hospitals.
He maintains that he donated the land at Elementaita to Fryda who is also a medical doctor but not to the ASN.
The hospital’s Head Nurse Salesio Maragu said: “The process of analyzing destruction of property at this facility is ongoing but I hope the wrangles will end soon and operations return back to normal”.
Not long ago, the Environment and Lands Court in Nakuru gave permission to the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi (ASN) to take over the management of the multi-billion shillings hospitals located in Lang’ata and Elementaita.
This was after a seven-year legal battle between William Charles Fryda, an American missionary who founded the hospital, and ASN.
On Friday staff halted provisions of services, fearing forceful evictions by the new management that had taken over but the Police however intervened and prevented any possible chaos at the facility led by Gilgil deputy county commissioner Mithike Ndambuki.
Ndambuki decided to man the hospital after receiving reports that some of the staff had planned to steal property before handing over to the new management.
Police barred relatives from admitting more patients to the facility, with some choosing to transfer them to the nearby hospitals in the county.
“We came to try and quell the tension among the hospital staff who had paralyzed activities at the hospital for fear of their lives. We learnt that some of them had run away after they suspected that police would come to evict them at night,” Ndambuki said.