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Heavy downpours flood Riverlea homes, residents demand restitution

'It's January, we have to pay school fees and sort out the children. We don't have money to be replacing stuff now.'


Mogol Street in Riverlea Extension lies at the bottom of a slope and when there are heavy rains, the homes in the street are flooded. A resident and her neighbour explained how they have been struggling battling to keep the flooding under control.

According to Prudence Fortuin, the issue is an ongoing one and on January 12, they experienced the worst. On the Saturday there were heavy rains which caused all of the water and sand to push down into the start of Mogol Street.

The stormwater drains were blocked and what caused the flood was that the concrete slab on the stormwater drain collapsed, closing at least half of the drain during the storm. The built-up water started flowing into Fortuin’s shack at 885 A Mogol Street and down into her neighbour’s house.

Fortuin points to her washing machine which she said was damaged in the flood.

Fortuin’s neighbour had to remove their baby from the flooded house. The flood which entered the living spaces was a mixture of sewage water, rainwater, litter and sand too.

According to the residents, there are elements in the community who dump their waste in the drain which causes it to block. When it rains, all of the built up waste and  sand clogs up the drains. The issue with the sewage is that when it rains, the sewage water also builds up and overflows into the yards.

Neighbour Doreen Nkambule and her husband had to spend thousands of Rands to revamp their yard so that they could avoid the flooding. In the early hours of January 13, the matter was reported to the ward councillor, Basil Douglas and to the Johannesburg Road Agencies (JRA).

On the same day, the councillor said that he was dealing with JRA as well as Disaster management on the matter. “I have to start from scratch to buy clothes. As we speak now, there are clothes that I need to throw away because I don’t have an option. Right now, I don’t even have a proper bed because it was damaged in the flood. My washing machine does not work anymore because the water went into the machine and damaged. My wardrobes are also damaged.”

“It’s January, we have to pay school fees and sort out the children. We don’t have money to be replacing stuff now. To be really honest, I’m sitting in a problem, if the ward councillor can do damage control, he needs to pay me for what I’ve lost.”

“He needs to come out because our councillor doesn’t even apologise, we never see his face. He runs to families in Pennyville but doesn’t do the same for us. We lost so much money from Saturday night and my father’s work documents are all damaged because of the flood,” she said.

Fortuin, her family and friends had to clean the yard. The residents said that they emptied 11 bins filled with sand in the yard. The water was also tripped in Fortuin’s yard because of all the litter which stuck to her fence. At the time of the interview, JRA officials cleaned out the stormwater drains and lifted the concrete slab and were to return the following day to complete the job.


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