Imtiaz Sooliman – Gift of the Givers believes the number of missing victims in the KZN floods stands at more than 200

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.