Hospitals have phone lines restored

KUALA LUMPUR: Staff at two major hospitals in the city centre can finally breathe a sigh of relief as the communication system in both hospitals was restored after having gone seven days without service.
Medical personnel at both the Tung Shin Hospital and Chinese Maternity Hospital gave a collective sigh of relieve as the phones started ringing again.
Hundreds of businesses in the Jalan Pudu area, which was also affected by the breakdown found their service restored.
Tung Shin Hospital administrator Chung King Keong said today that the service breakdown had created a hassle for hospital personnel and the public.
"Doctors were having difficulties contacting the nurses on duty to follow up on the patients' conditions. People trying to contact the hospitals to make appointments were also left in the lurch.
"Even though Telekom Malaysia (TM) had temporarily provided us with a single working line while they tried to solve the issue, it was still insufficient as the hospital handled close to 200 calls at any time ranging from emergencies, internal connections, general queries and bookings.
"So a communication breakdown is a major concern for the hospital and due to this, the hospital saw a 30% drop in patients this past week," he said while thanking theSun for highlighting the hospital's plight which he felt had compelled TM to speed up repairs.
"Although the service breakdown is now a thing of the past, I hope that TM can handle the issue better and more efficiently, if such a problem were to occur again," he said.
Meanwhile, checks showed that businesses and hotels in the area found that most of their daily operations were restored as the phones started working again.
In a statement today, TM said it restored the cable condition back to normal before midnight on Wednesday and was currently verifying with its customers on whether their services are back online.
TM said it began restoration work on March 22 but failed to complete the work due to several problems.
"We are trying our level best to expedite the restoration process, but the work permit from Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) only allows our network team to conduct rectification works from 10pm to 3am as cables impacted are located along Jalan Pudu main road.
"Heavy downpour, combined with sporadic thunderstorms, have hampered the restoration works as our network team can only resume after the weather is cleared," it said.
TM said its staff had to manually trace the positions of manholes, as the major manholes along Jalan Pudu were covered due to upgrades in road pavements.
"We understand the inconveniences caused by this, and hence, will provide a service rebate during the downtime period," it said.
TM said as a temporary solution, it had provided free wireless lines to Tung Shin Hospital to enable them to receive calls and access the internet.
"We have also diverted incoming calls to another service number, so that customers can still reach Tung Shin Hospital," it added.