Serious legal documents which relate to high-profile cases against the Gauteng department of health have been lost in the fire still raging on at its Pixley ka Isaka Seme Street, head office in the Johannesburg CBD.

This was an admission made by the chief financial officer (CFO) of the Gauteng health department, Kabelo Lehloenya, during a portfolio committee meeting in the Gauteng legislature on Thursday.

“In terms of data lost on hard copies, we have suffered a massive blow. That I must concede to. Even in my office as the CFO, we had a lot of documents, HOD, we had a lot of hard copies there. We sign memos almost on a daily basis. That information indeed has been lost.

“I just want to state to the members that you only have the office of the head of legal that is stationed at BOL (Bank of Lisbon building that burnt down). Processing and directors and everybody else are all stationed at [the building on] diagonal Street. A lot of the files are still there but indeed we did lose quite a good number of files, and those files that have been lost at BOL are of critical cases because obviously the files that would be at the head of legal would be important files,” said Lehloenya.