The Democratic Alliance (DA) has appealed to KwaZulu-Natal’s CoGTA MEC and portfolio committee to seriously reconsider spending priorities in a bid to bolster, modernise and support disaster management in the province, particularly at a local level.
The call comes after a recent committee oversight inspection of the Edumbe Municipality to assess the damage of cyclone Eloise (view here, here and here) which has revealed a virtually non-existent disaster management system within the area.
The DA is concerned about the state of readiness of the eDumbe Municipality to respond to disasters. We do not believe that either this Local Municipality or the Zululand District Municipality meet the requirements of the Disaster Management Act.
In Edumbe there is no local disaster management centre despite the municipality being a high risk in terms of droughts, fires, heavy rains, lightening and high winds.
During the inspection it was discovered that eDumbe’s Fire Department only consists of eight fire fighters with one old fire engine that is not capable of servicing the municipality. As a result, reinforcements are often called in from abaQulusi.
To add to this, the chief traffic officer is also the head of the fire services, licencing office, fire arms control office and the disaster management office. This is an untenable situation.
Further findings include;
• Discord between the functions and duties of the District and Local spheres of government leading to duplication of work, wasting of resources and in some cases misalignment when it comes to who is responsible for which function. Victims are then caught up in the crossfire
• No volunteer structure in place.
• A municipal budget allocation which does not nearly support the type of response that a municipality should be providing.
• No long term planning or forecasting around disaster management and disaster mitigation and;
• Local bridges which have not been constructed in a manner that provides safe passage during flooding – a seemingly obvious design error that must be investigated.
The findings come after the DA previously exposed that Disaster Management in KZN is underfunded by at least R298 million, with the lack of a number of specialised vehicles and management centres severely impacting on government’s ability to respond.
It is clear that years of financial mismanagement and lack of proper budgeting have left the eDumbe municipality in a position where it is unable to adequately support residents in times of crisis. In addition to this, there are clearly tensions between the local and district municipalities, the result of which impacts on resource allocation and functional alignment.
The DA calls on MEC Hlomuka and the portfolio committee to urgently prioritize this matter and to deal with issues outlined. We will be tracking the progress of this and will continue to investigate and monitor local level response capabilities.