Dozens of pen­sion­ers, preg­nant women and chil­dren lined up out­side the Debe Health Cen­tre for more than three hours on Thurs­day morn­ing await­ing a se­cu­ri­ty guard to open the gates.

Dur­ing the wait, one man faint­ed in the heat and two preg­nant women, Or­nel­la Ma­haraj and Veera Sookdeo, had to leave be­cause they could not bear stand­ing in the blis­ter­ing heat. Even nurs­ing staff and se­nior med­ical per­son­nel stood by the gates un­til the se­cu­ri­ty staff ar­rived around 9.15 am and opened the gate. The of­fi­cer from Paragon Se­cu­ri­ty was heard telling pa­tients that it was not her fault as she got called to work late.

Hamid Khan said it was cus­tom­ary for the se­cu­ri­ty guard to pick up the keys from the Debe Po­lice Post and open the health cen­tre by 7.30 am. How­ev­er, sev­er­al times this week the guard failed to do this, re­sult­ing in a de­layed open­ing of the fa­cil­i­ty at Welling­ton Road, Debe. Some of the pa­tients, many of whom were pen­sion­ers, said they were dis­ap­point­ed in the man­age­ment of the South­west Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty.

Boysie Ju­man said, "This is in­com­pe­tence at the high­est lev­el. They nor­mal­ly open here by 7.30 am but many peo­ple come here as ear­ly as 6 am so they can get an ear­ly num­ber."

Sookdeo Kan­chan, 81, who fell out­side the health cen­tre be­cause of weak­ness, said he was al­so dis­ap­point­ed.

"If we have to wait we will wait but we should be made to suf­fer out­side like this," Kan­chan said.

Hal­i­ma Khan al­so said she went to the cen­tre to do a blood test but was turned away.

"They told me that be­cause of the num­ber of peo­ple wait­ing here they can­not do it. I have to be resched­uled," Khan added.

Am­putee Bhadase Sookraj, who sur­vived three heart at­tacks and two strokes, was al­so forced to go home with­out get­ting his blood tests and med­ical check­up.

An­oth­er man who iden­ti­fied him­self as "Mouth" said the man­ag­er of the health cen­tre should have gone to the po­lice sta­tion and got the keys to open the cen­tre.

"Why they wait­ing for the se­cu­ri­ty guard? If the se­cu­ri­ty gets in an ac­ci­dent or has an emer­gency, does this mean every­one here should be in­con­ve­nienced while they wait for the se­cu­ri­ty to open? No! This is crazi­ness. Look at how many poor sick peo­ple wait­ing for health care. This should not hap­pen," Mouth said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, an of­fi­cial of Paragon Se­cu­ri­ty Con­sul­tants said he did not have in­for­ma­tion on the mat­ter and could not com­ment. He said the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor would con­tact Guardian Me­dia.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the South­west Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty Kei­th Mc Don­ald could not be reached for com­ment as calls to his cel­lu­lar phone went unan­swered.