The DA in KwaZulu-Natal will today approach the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) regarding the inhumane living conditions in community halls that are housing flood victims.
This follows the DA’s oversight visit to nine community halls across eThekwini to ascertain the living conditions, government aid and the promised Temporary Residential Units (TRUs) (view here, here and here).
In a media briefing on 24 April, Premier Sihle Zikalala, promised to build 4 396 TRUs within that week to accommodate families displaced during the devastating floods in the province. These were to be built in Ugu, Ilembe and eThekwini.
On 5 July 2022, the Premier once again announced that they had identified eight sites to build TRUs in eThekwini and that they would deliver 1 074 units as part of their first phase. He neglected to give time frames.
Three months after the April floods and after many promises from the government about these units, the DA has only been made aware of 65 TRUs in eThekwini to date.
While Zikalala made these commitments before the media, many of the victims that we engaged with during our oversight informed the DA that no officials from government , provincial departments or the municipality had made them aware of plans to build temporary housing.
Instead, they have been left in these community halls to fend for themselves with little to no aid in terms of food, blankets and other essentials. The conditions in some of these halls are appalling, which no human should be subjected to. We have seen people who are sleeping in toilets and on concrete floors.
At the Mountview Community Hall there are over 400 people squashed in the same hall. We were disheartened when we visited the Waterloo Community Hall, only housing women and children, to find one of the residents had just given birth in the hall – certainly not the way a newborn should enter the world.
The ANC government has once again proven that they do not care about the plight of South Africans and clearly are unable to implement temporary housing for the flood victims
The DA in the province will continue to engage with all structures in the province to expedite addressing the humanitarian crisis facing our province.