MANY phone calls between the City and national government resulted in portable toilets being returned to the Paint City refugee camp in Bellville yesterday.
On Friday more than 500 refugees and asylum seekers were left without toilets. The families from 11 different countries were accommodated in a large tent when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020.
They were given a deadline to reintegrate with communities last May, but have not done so yet.
More than 20 mobile toilets were removed on Friday following the removal of 10 portable showers nearly three months ago.
Spokesperson for the refugees Hafiz Mohammed said: “First it began with the removal of showers and now it’s (the) toilets. It’s the start of winter and Ramadan, we need these facilities,” said
“Refugees feel their basic human rights and dignity (are) being violated,” he said.
Cape Town’s mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis told Weekend Argus that the City had nothing to do with the removal of the ablution facilities.
“The national Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) is responsible for this.”
But the department also denied responsibility.
“The operations at the site are done by Home Affairs together with the (UN) Commissioner for refugees,” Zara Nicholson, DPWI spokesperson said.
Mayoral committee member for community services and health Patricia van der Ross echoed Hill-Lewis’s sentiments and said her department was trying to get the toilets replaced.
“My environmental health official is trying to source who gave the instruction for the removal of the toilets.”
After investigating, the Weekend Argus learned that the Home Affairs’s contract with the service provider had expired and, therefore, the toilets had been removed.
Van der Ross told the Weekend Argus that in the interim they would send portable toilets and showers to the site “until Home Affairs sorted this out”.
On Saturday afternoon the Department of Home Affairs said it had changed suppliers after the expiry of the previous contract.
The fenced site is effectively a refugee camp next to the Bellville taxi rank. Other families were accommodated at a site in Wingfield, near Goodwood.
The families had initially settled in and around Green Market Square after they were forcibly moved from outside the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) offices in Waldorf Square in October 2019 during a sit-in protest.
The refugees wanted the local government to help them relocate to other countries, including Canada. Some refugees had opted to return home.
A refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Alice Kitenza, told the Weekend Argus that she’s at “breaking point”.
“Why is life so hard? Why are people so evil?” the mother-of-three asked.
“We just want to be treated with dignity, we want them to uphold and respect the human rights of refugees and asylum seekers. We are in danger here, we are crying for rescuers to come (and) help us,” she said.
Director of operations at the NPO Gift of the Givers Rayhaan Sooliman said they supply the refugees with food – similar to the support it provides to other feeding schemes.