The Special Joint Committee on Flood Disaster Relief and Recovery of the Parliament has ended its inspection visit to KwaZulu-Natal.
On the last part of the visit, the committee visited two locations that are being utilised as temporary shelters due to the province’s April flooding.
The group visited two locations, including Mount View Community Hall, a temporary shelter in Verulam, and Umdloti, on Thursday.
The committee deemed the living conditions at the Mount View shelter to be inappropriate and cruel.
Although the number of persons housed in the shelter has decreased from 400 to slightly over 200, the committee remarked that the facility remains overcrowded.
Nonetheless, committee members applauded the City of eThekwini’s pledge that shelter residents would be shifted to Temporary Residential Units (TRU) by the end of October 2022.
Sihle Zikalala, MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), assured the committee that a suitable land piece, Cottonland, had been acquired from Tongaat Hullett for this purpose.
Access to Cottonland, according to Zikalala, will position inhabitants in close proximity to facilities like as schools and sources of employment.
The committee committed to monitoring and following through on the pledges made by both Mxolisi Kaunda, mayor of eThekwini Municipality, and the CoGTA MEC.
Since its previous visit in May 2022, the committee has also expressed its pleasure with the progress done in the restoration of the Umdloti region.
“The committee is pleased that all the work was done by the City of eThekwini internally without outsourcing it externally. The committee calls on the city to have a long-term plan that factors in the reality of climate change to prevent future landslides in the area,” said committee chairpersons, Cedric Frolick and Jomo Nyambi.
The committee expressed regret that it was unable to visit the Tongaat Water Treatment Plant after learning that work had been made on the rebuilding of the damaged water treatment facility.
Thursday’s visit to the water treatment facility was postponed owing to a protest that occurred at the same time.
“The committee plans to engage the communities impacted by the damage to the water treatment plant at the earliest available opportunity to listen to their grievances,” Frolick and Nyambi said.
The three-day inspection visit to KZN, which began on Tuesday, provided the committee with the opportunity to review, among other things, the progress achieved by the province government and municipalities in regions badly hit by the floods.