HOMELESS people who were forcibly removed from Durban and dropped off in Amanzimtoti last week, saw most of them walking back to the city.
An eyewitness also saw vagrants being dropped off by police on the N2 at the offramp to the Gallering shopping centre. It is believed some of them were rounded up from the vicinity of the Durban city hall and dropped off locally.
The removal of vagrants from the city forms part of eThekwini Municipality’s efforts to clean-up areas taken over by vagrants. As part of the operation, some 400 vagrants were transported back to their homes in Umbumbulu, Umlazi, KwaMashu and Chatsworth.
On Tuesday, the Sun spoke to a number of vagrants in the area, but none of them claimed to be displaced from Durban.
“The daily operations are in line with the Clean my City programme launched by Mayor Cllr James Nxumalo in March to address the social ills in the community and are part of ongoing interventions to deal with vagrancy and loitering within the city. During interventions the city also provides social assistance to the vagrants while also enforcing by-laws. Since the beginning of the interventions in April, 442 people have come forward to indicate their interest in assistance and all were referred to the Dennis Hurley Centre (DHC) for services, though only 365 people made it to DHC and out of those, 226 have returned for follow up interventions,” said eThekwini Municipality’s communications head, Tozi Mthethwa.
The city has engaged two non-government organisations, ICARE and AGAPE to provide holistic interventions to street children, which includes the removal of children from the street.
“The city has identified a facility in Illovo which will be used as a shelter for people who are homeless, including drug users who are committed to receiving treatment. The facility requires renovations as it has been vandalised and damaged, needs security and operational costs. The costing for these is underway so as to enable the facility to be brought to a habitable state.
The facility will be able to accommodate about 100 people at a time. Once renovated it will be able to offer skills development programmes that will also be linked to our Expanded Public Works Programme.”
The Sun queried with Ethekwini on Tuesday, 15 July as to the reasons for dropping off vagrants in Toti, but at the time of going to press no information was forthcoming.
Ward 97 councillor, Andre Beetge said he was aware of the relocation and had queried the matter with Metro Police. He will report back to the Sun.
