Imtiaz Sooliman – Gift of the Givers believes the number of missing victims in the KZN floods stands at more than 200
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The loss of people in the KCN floods has resulted in the loss of around 800 people in the first few months, with the combined efforts of disaster management and recovery teams being emphasized. The organization has been working on a plan to help missing people and their families, but has not received a definitive answer yet. The speakers discuss the need for trained people to be on higher-end and the importance of aid in disaster relief efforts and donating to relief efforts. The lack of trust in government and internal issues affecting the country have also affected people, with training and higher-end people being necessary for compliance.
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Relief and aid organization. Gift of the givers believes the number
of missing people in the KCN floods stands at more than 200 not
the 48 as indicated by government. Gift of the givers is in the
province assisting with search and rescue and search and recovery
operations that are underway in various parts of KCN that disaster
has claimed the lives of 448
people in that province. Let's speak to the founder of gift of
the givers, Dr MTS, Suleiman, who joins us via our video link this
morning. Dr Suleiman, it's great to have you with us on the
program, and as always, a big thank you coming from so many
quarters of the country for once again, showing up when parts of
the country I need
good morning, Michelle. Thanks very much, and thank you to the
country for their warm sentiments, their support. You know it's any
any scientific we want to do what our teams are trying to do. People
in difficulty, they're in hardship, they've lost lives. They
want closure. We all have to try and together as a nation, we are
really standing together, and that is so incredible in our country.
So Dr Suleman give to the givers now saying that the number of
people who are missing as a result of the floods may well be four
times higher than what is being reported by our official
statistics. How does this inform the kind of work that your search
and recovery teams are doing?
Well, first of all, it's not only my search and recovery teams. It's
a combined effort for the case of then provincial disaster
management, recipient disaster management and my teams, there are
people that have come from four, four and three states. So it's a
combined effort from everyone. It's not going to change
materially much. What's going to happen? Because the time period is
too long. It's already, you know, 1011, days and and to recover
people from water or Buddh is not that easy. Unfortunately, you
cannot be that successful. But it helps us try to bring closure at
for people to know that something was tried. And how do we get to
that? We compare the floods of 2019
and 2022
and in that period we were doing distributions, and in this period
we will do distributions. There was infrastructure damage, and
here was infrastructure damage houses at this point. But here's
the difference, there's many more people displaced now than before,
and when we went into area, this was the point that really made us
sit up and think we're missing something. When my teams are
distributing, somebody would say there's two people missing in that
house. Everything they understand. Somebody would say there's five
misses. People looking moving from this house again, is missing.
They're not. Daughters did not come back from school. Somebody
didn't come back from work. Within they got washed away. And then the
final one was when one of my team members saw women sitting on the
edge of the river in Uganda, and he asked them, what you doing?
Gets dangerous. They said, We're waiting for the bodies of our
loved ones to flow down so we can catch them and bury them. Then we
started thinking, this is too consistent. It has never happened
before. It looks like many more people have passed on than we
really know. And that's when we decided to put our team together.
And at the same time, of course, other departments also putting
teams together. But this could be pure speculation. How do you get a
definitive answer? And we still send out a message to say, here's
a whatsapp number. If you have a family member that's missing, or
you know somebody that's missing, can you give us some feedback?
What in minutes, that phone started getting messages, and two
days ago, by the morning, we had received a count of 239
people missing the names, the ages, the area cardia washed away.
What happened? All information came through a day. Two days
later, we got two feedbacks. Don't worry, we found two people. They
didn't one didn't have his phone, and his phone was washed away,
managed to make contact with us. And the second one was also made
some contact. After the 239 two people made contact. The other 237
no news. Subsequently, we're still getting names to that.
Dr Suleman, you've been talking about the 2019 floods, and because
of the work that your organization does, you have this benefit of
hindsight. So you can tell us you know when you were doing your
relief efforts in 2019 versus the relief efforts that you and other
organizations, including government, are doing now, what
has changed in your view, did any of our systems improve in the past
three years?
No, nothing has improved. That's a given. You know, we shouldn't be
having this kind of form. We have improved our systems. Yes, nobody
can control the rain. We can't stop 340, millimeters, or
whatever, 40 millimeters of rain coming in a short space of time.
Nobody can stop that. Nobody can stop destruction. It's impossible,
but we can minimize the destruction. We can minimize the
loss of life by taking certain precautions. And the first
precaution and the best precaution and the precaution that should
have been implemented from years ago was not allowing people to
look in low lying areas. I.
Especially along flood plains, because repeatedly, a small stream
can become a raging river. How fast it moves, how high it climbs,
depends on the amount of rain that comes or how fast it comes. That's
the big factor, and that's why so many people in those kind of areas
have been very affected. Most of the missing people I'm getting is
from Inanna, Mulvaney and doesn't hook, you know, and more England
areas where they were living and low lying areas, they've been
barely, badly affected. So that's the first thing. And of course, we
can't just dumb people and put their weight it don't want to be.
This is something that has to be negotiated as to get acceptance
from all parties, but we have to put people on higher end, and we
can't allow anyone to go lower that. Yeah. Certainly. The second
issue. There's another that there's another issue is in terms
of there's many issues. I don't know much time you have, but I
just mentioned two or a second point, all related to each other.
We didn't have enough helicopters. The helicopters we have are not
properly maintained. Why did we not have enough helicopters when
we know the cyclonic weather is along the coast stretching all the
way from Empire into port Edward and Port St John's. We should have
had helicopters along the old road, not because of this, but
always because this way they could happen suddenly. We needed more
boats. We needed more trained personnel. You can't have a
central situation where all people are stationed, say, in Durban, and
when the road is broken and the bridges are gone and you can't fly
the range, what happens? We need to have trained people along all
the lines. And then, of course, we depend on cellular networks in
every disaster. Those are the first things that grow. You know,
why don't we have walkie talkie stations in different areas when
we know these things are coming? And especially since we knew
before Friday there's going to be a bad storm, we didn't know how
bad is going to be, but we knew there's going to be a bad storm.
These are just simple measures. There's many more, you know, that
could have been implemented and should be implemented going
forward. Yeah, certainly. I mean all of the issues that you
mentioned, Dr Suleiman,
you know, together with the response from people in South
Africa, in KZN and around the world who want to donate to relief
efforts in KwaZulu Natal and many organizations, including, just
yesterday, the University of Johannesburg, saying that it's on
a fundraising drive as well, but it's not wanting to give any of
that money to government and government relief efforts, in
fact, saying it specifically will be giving all of the money raised
to gift of the givers. What do you make of that kind of sentiment? Dr
Sullivan,
is it tragic that a country does not believe in its own government?
I mean, the government is really look at itself, you know. And
that's why the President also came out quite strongly. He doesn't
want money to get stolen, which means he knows that thing happens,
you know. And there's an internal problem which the party has to
sort out. The internal problems are impacting on the functioning
of the country, and this is horrendous for the people. It's
like, you know, we don't need you anymore. We should rather go and
visit somebody else here. That's the kind of messages being sent.
Yes, we, of course, we are grateful that people trust us and
believe in us, but it's painful that you can't believe in your own
government, you know? And we wished it could be the other way
around. And people can say, You know what, we elected the
government. They're the Guardians, they made custodians of the
country. We have full faith in them. You know, they should put
the systems right, and we'll work together with them. Now, people
are working gradually. They're not sure whether it will get delivered
or not. And the biggest mistake they made, or the biggest
disaster, was money disappearing during the pandemic for covid 19
for PPEs. How does anybody steal 14 point 7 billion rand of money
at a time when people are dying. And you know, there's no shame,
there's no ethics, there's no morality, there's no values. I'm
not saying everybody in government is bad. There's a lot of good
people in government who are equally upset as the public is
about what is happening. They want to see things change, but they
need to have to have a system to enforce law, to have better
auditory systems and to make sure things go the right way. I mean,
as opposed budget protectors, Finance Minister, you know, God,
abuna, was straightforward. He was clear. He was transparent. He
said, I wish we could find reliable people who could fix
things in the whole country, and just give those contacts to those
people who are reliable, you know, and can do the job done. He then
says in the same meeting that his people around him, his advisors
and his staff and his administration said, Minister,
there are people in your party that were very unhappy if you do
that, there will be internal fighting, because everybody wants
the contracts, and that is the state of where we stand now, which
they have To fix urgently and immediately. Incredibly
disheartening that sentiment that you're describing there. Dr, MTR,
surima, let me thank you for your time this morning, and thank you
once again for the incredible work that you and gift of the givers
continue to do now, specifically in kwozado Natal.