Durban - Councillors in eThekwini Municipality are proposing drastic measures to cope with deadly natural disasters, including condemning houses built in dangerous and vulnerable areas.
ANC councillor Nkosenhle Madlala said it was important that the City take pre-emptive action to prevent loss of life by educating people about the areas they live in, if those areas were deemed at risk of flooding.
Madlala was speaking after members of the executive committee were briefed on the disastrous storms that occurred earlier this year, which claimed lives, displaced and injured people and destroyed homes.
One of the most severe was the June rain storms, which saw several people lose their lives and caused infrastructure damage that will cost an estimated R543 million to repair or rebuild. The report on the June rains shows that eThekwini’s Department of Human Settlements has proposed relocating about 360 families affected by floods and who live close to a stream. The total cost is an estimated R83m.
According to the report, the most damage caused by the storm was to infrastructure which fall under the roads unit, where the City needs to spend about R390m on rehabilitation.
Of this amount, the bulk (R327m) will go towards repairing stormwater and catchment infrastructure. An amount of R7.5m will be spent on roads, while sanitation and water infrastructure will need R55m.
Madlala said it was good no lives were lost in the recent rains, which was largely due to the early warning system.
“As part of our education, when we are dealing with the issue of land invasion, we must include education. As much as people are moving from all over the country to come to be near places of opportunity like eThekwini, it does not help that a person arrives today and we (City) tell him that this place is not good for habitation, but he fights to stay and tomorrow when that area is washed away by a river there is no correlation between what we have been doing and the consequences of what happened.
“Like the Department of Labour would come and condemn buildings, we must have a system where we (would say) we are not going to forcibly remove you because you have these rights, but we must have a red cross on the house to say from this house to that house they are condemned and should there be a disaster these houses are going to be washed away.”
He also called on the city to form a volunteer group that will assist with disaster response in light of the frequency of disasters.
Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda said another challenge that had emerged when it comes to responding to disasters was that the national Department of Human Settlements had centralised funding to respond to disasters.
DA councillor Andre Beetge expressed concern about whether the council was rebuilding “better” after disasters by constructing more resilient infrastructure, pointing out that he had noticed that when there are heavy rains, the same areas that have been flooded before, are flooded again.