Imtiaz Sooliman – Gift of the Givers helps KZN communities
AI: Summary ©
A representative from a civil society organization discusses the devastation caused by floods and the lack of water in certain areas of the country. They note that many people have lost their lives and have lost their homes, and that there is a need for people to rebuilding their homes. The organization is also working on creating a water supply to people who may have been killed by the flood.
AI: Summary ©
Gift of the givers. Organization also on the ground to help
communities in KZN we left destitute by the floods. 253
people are said to have died in teguini alone. The 1000s more have
now been left destitute. The exact numbers are not yet known. Let's
find out more from the organisation's founder, Doctor MTS
suloman. Doctor suloman, good afternoon. Thank you very much for
your time. What about are you and what are you seeing on the ground?
I know that you started trying to focus on assisting from yesterday.
What is the initial assessment you've made?
Good afternoon, Dan, we've we've covered many areas already. We
started. With Dan Peter mattersburg, Hillcrest, Brendan
Hill new Germany, fine town, Tonga, predom, Phoenix. We've
covered Abu parts of Easter, pinglow,
amlazi inanda and many other central Devon. Our team started
off yesterday morning. They got a call at 5am and this the person
who called them said, remember, you were here last week on the
fourth of April. We went from Igbo heights Tonga. And the story that
was carried by everyone, the granny who got who got washed away
with his three grandchildren, she actually received a full passer
from us last week, Tuesday on the fourth of April. And our teams are
very heartbroken to get that message. So that's the first place
they stopped when they got there. All those people we had the week
before, their houses were affected with water, one meter high, you
know. And in all old people, all tensioners, they had to move
around, and they had to be taken away from there and moved to
higher ground. In all the other areas that we've been to, it's the
same. Everybody has noticed the infrastructure destruction. You've
seen the road, you've seen the houses, you see the wall. But what
we haven't captured is the trauma and the emotional damage that
people have suffered. They've been sitting in their homes. A stream
becomes a river overnight. I don't even overnight within minutes, and
people get washed away. Somebody's trying to catch their child or
their mother or their brother, all the life positions are washed
away, and that's a similar story throughout all the informal
settlements. Also, houses in low lying areas have been severely
damaged. So this is destruction. We haven't seen the end of it yet.
Once the roads open up and we get to more ideas, we're going to see
far more destruction. Talking about a house, your teams are here
at this house. We have standing right now behind me, the search
and rescue personnel are trying to recover our body. On Monday night,
the person's house, the world collapsed, came down to the
neighbor's house and collapsed over the domestic and since Monday
night, search and rescue teams have been battling to rescue the
or to take out the body of the individual that has passed on, and
what we do require, and if anybody is watching this program, bobcat
is required urgently to try to freeze this procedure and to
recover the person, to give them a decent burial. And it's similar
stories throughout the province, where there's just so much of
hardship, so much of pain and so much of trauma that's excluding
the infrastructure that damaged the first stories, the emotions
are far more deeper than what you can capture on television. Yeah,
no. Doctor Suleman, just a short while ago, speaking to the NEC for
health in the province normal, my colleagues go get established that
just in a teguni alone, by last night in the mortuaries in and
around Durban, there were 253 bodies. I mean, the scale and
magnitude of the devastation. I mean, it's going to take us days
to really get to grips with it.
We're not really sure of the figures. Then, you know, because
lots of people have been washed away with that storm coming and
that speed. Well, let's compare it this way. If shipping containers
can float on the end too and can be thrown against a breach with
that kind of weight, can you imagine what has happened to
people with simple checks that don't have the concrete walls to
protect them? We don't know how many people and when we get
feedback. When you see messages on social media and on different
medical checks, people will say, You know what this man told me?
See how his family members disappeared. It's not accounted
for and like that. We're probably going to pick up many more numbers
for the days to come.
Yeah. Now urgent interventions are being mobilized. You are on the
ground as civil society organization, gift of the givers,
as well as part of the emergency relief that is required. What
should the focus be? Particularly, because in many areas, there's no
water now there's no electricity.
Yes, that's a new challenge. Because what is required for those
who are not even affected by the floods, you know, the last day or
so, you're getting messages from from people who say the
municipality that the water purification systems are not
working. And today, we were surprised when numbers of people
started calling us for water, and we realized that the systems are
not working. And we asked, What about buying from the shop? They
said, there's no water in the shops too. So people are battling.
We are busy arranging super links truckloads of water to bring to
their.
And it's never going to be enough for so many hundreds of 1000s of
people, but it's part of our intervention in what we can do so
what the requirements is very, very big. And of course, food.
People are hungry. They need blankets. It's still raining. They
need warm clothes. And by by next week, a lot of people will have to
move and start rebuilding their homes, especially in informal
settlements. But of course, human settlements and local disaster
have to look at replacing those people on higher ground. You can't
keep building on flood plains, and you can have this problem over and
over again, but once a land is allocated, people are going to
need building material. Children are going to need school uniforms.
They're going to need stationery to go back to school. So the
challenges are many, but one of the biggest challenges right now
is bottle waters. Thank you very much. This gift of the givers,
founder, Doctor MJ Suleman on the ground in Peter marisburg for us
in KwaZulu, giving us a sense of what is happening, where their
property, where he's at. He just told us that there's rescue
operators, the rescue officials, trying to locate a body. So the
tally just goes up and up. We don't have an official final kind
of confirmation yet. We understand later today we should get that
from the authority to say exactly how many people may have been
killed here for.