Concern over housing relief efforts months after KZN floods

THE Ad Hoc Joint Committee on Flood Disaster Relief and Recovery has raised concern about the lack of coordination and integrated plans to resolve the housing needs of people displaced by the floods.

The committee held a meeting with various departments to gain an understanding of the extent of the support provided by government to the affected provinces and municipalities.

This to assist communities severely affected by the floods that battered parts of the country in April and in May.

Committee chairpersons, Cedric Frolick and Jomo Nyambi, said the committee was unhappy about the slow delivery of temporary residential units (TRUs), noting that this makes it difficult to address the housing backlog and results in the shelters being used for longer than expected.

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“The committee wants the Department of Human Settlements to accelerate the provision of TRUs, with the understanding that they are not a permanent solution, but only a temporary measure,” Nyambi said.

The committee said the applications for relief funds only opened in July, four months after the April floods.

This, they said, reflected that there was no sense of urgency to respond to the declaration of a national state of disaster.

In the Siyathuthuka Informal Settlement in Sea Cow Lake, 87 homes were washed away by a large landslide due to the flooding in April.

Northglen News spoke to Nkosinathi Mncwango, one of the hundreds of residents from the settlement left homeless, who is still living at the Greenwood Park Community Hall on Chris Hani Road.

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He told us his family faces an uncertain future.

“We are feeling anger, frustration and despair. We have been living in the hall in Greenwood Park since April, and it feels like we are not going anywhere soon. We have had some official saying we will be accommodated and helped, but still, nothing has been done. One of my children begins school next year, and with all the uncertainty around where we will be staying, I don’t know where to enroll her.

“As a family, we don’t know what the future holds as we’ve been told we cannot rebuild where our home was. The ground is too unstable, and if it rains again, there might be even greater destruction. We lost everything in the floods; my children, my wife and I made it out with just the clothes we had on. I know I can speak for other families when I say we are not sure what the future holds,” he said.

Mncwango said he has been selling clothes and scrap metal as a way of getting by in the interim.