Imtiaz Sooliman – Gift of the Givers lends helping hand

Some cape is running dry. It's implemented six hour water outages

last week. The cuts are expected to continue for eight weeks after

one of the region's four reservoirs dried up. Gift of the

givers has been helping the province with the water issues.

Founder and chairperson of gift of the givers, Imtiaz Suleiman, joins

us now for an update. Thank you so much for your time. Mr. Suleiman,

we do appreciate it. I think this conversation must be a broad one,

because we need to understand how much the gift of the givers are

actually doing. But let's start off with the Eastern Cape. The

situation is very dire. We had the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality on

the show earlier on, and they've told us that the dam levels are

dangerously low. How much work have you done in that particular

province?

Good evening. Heidi, yes, the dam levels are dangerously low. We've

engaged the municipality, the business chamber, actually we were

called by them by the municipality, and business chamber

at the end of May, and then we went then, and we went again last

week, but there's measures that have to be taken which have to be

practical. It has to be done right now. And if there's no rain, the

dams are not full and there's no water. The only other option is

two one is to save water from being wasted and there's a lot of

leaks in area, and secondly, to use groundwater. And in the

process, we found the third option, which I'll talk about now,

in terms of the leaks. Fortunately, the business chamber,

driven by big companies, I've have put teams have given contracts,

and from tomorrow, I think they'll be going out to fix as many leaks

as possible. They're also fixing leaks besides the road on the on

in schools, giving contracts to fix leaks in the schools itself,

all that can be a substantial saving. Every liter saved means

there's more water for another day. But the public itself, you

know, we make a call to them. I'm not saying they're using too much

water, but every half a liter they can save will be beneficial. If

they have leaks in their own homes, in the toilets, in the

taps, in the garden, please attend to that. That will all benefit.

You have to work together. There's no other way of saving that city.

The second aspect, beside the leaks is groundwater, and that's

where we've come in. We've already drilled two balls in a school

called Alpha Primary School. There's a way in which we are

drilling these balls. We look at which are the red zones, which

means those areas will lose water first. So there's no point in

other areas, they will lose water in 30 days time. We have to go

where water will be lost first, because we need to intervene

rapidly. And whilst doing that, you gotta see the type of rock,

the geology in those areas. Is it worth running? Are we going to get

good water? Are the years going to be good? Can you drink that water?

So we are following a system. All the areas have been plotted out.

We visited the sites ourselves. I've been there for a whole week

in the area, and we started drilling. And we fortunately

getting good water. We bring a second drilling machine in

tomorrow, and we've got additional people on site that we brought in,

additional people who live there are not part of our team, but

remaining part of our team to speed up the process. So that's

the first thing. Start drilling balls in special areas, especially

schools. Hawaii schools, some of the schools have 1100 children,

huge compliment of staff. And I think a school like malaba, it has

four informal settlements around it. Those children come with

busses from eight different areas, and many of them come with taxis,

which means you can give the children. They can take water to

their homes from all those areas. Give it to the teachers. They can

take it home. And you can give communities around the school. So

you try to reach, spread your reach as far as possible, to reach

as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. So that has

to be very good in terms of the planning. And then the last point

I mentioned to you, that is, there's other things also, but the

last well, it's two more points. One is, every place you go to,

there are boards that have been built some years ago, but people,

they don't, it has not been used. They've been closed for some

reason, again, in partnership with the municipality, and we've got a

very good arrangement with them. We asked them, Do you have these

balls, and do you know of them? And two nights ago, at midnight,

we got the whole list, and the next day, they gave us people from

the municipality who actually took us around and said, Here's the

ball, here's the ball. And we found them, and tomorrow we're

doing the same thing. The advantage of that is you don't

have to drill. It's ready. You put a pump in, and you got water

immediately. And that's a big crisis. So it's water immediately.

And the last point, and we can discuss some other issues, is,

whilst we're in the business chamber on Friday, we we heard

that Sally boss has got a desalination plant. We went and

met the MD on site, and immediately they're offering us

500,000

liters of water through the desalination plant daily, and

that's what you need. You need millions of liters of water to get

to people very, very quickly. They are the things, but these are the

most important things. Certainly, I think it's phenomenal work what

you're doing. I had witnessed a borehole in being drilled in

KwaZulu Natal because of the floods there at a school. I just

can't remember the school's name, but it's amazing how much actually

goes into.

Drilling a borehole. I'm not sure if you have the figures, Mr.

Suleiman, but how many boreholes are we looking at, especially in

areas that are in desperate need of water in the Eastern Cape? I

know you're saying that a list was given to you, but how much are we

looking how many are we looking at?

Eastern Cape is huge. We got balls all over so let's stick to Nelson

Mandela Bay Metro. You know, we got balls in Harappan at Makanda.

We need several schools. We've been drilling lots of boats. But

our focus right now is on the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro itself.

There's a list at this close to 50 or 60 balls given to us. But when

you have that list again, there's certain criteria. Number one, how

far is it from the community? If it's too far away in some isolated

place, it doesn't make sense to develop that goal. Secondly, is an

electrical supply nearby, because you need electricity to drive the

pub. If there isn't, there's no point. Certainly, the type of rock

that is drilled into if that rock is going to produce brackish

water, no, you can't use it. So from the first three the that we

saw, the one was in Galvin Dale stadium, excellent site, good

borehole,

1000s of people around it. Perfect place to expand it to to set it up

and to use it, you know, reach lots of people, and people can

come their vehicles and collect water from there. The other place

that we got request from was the canine unit. The saps canine unit,

they called us on June 16 and said, What? There is no water for

the dogs. What's going to happen here? But we got a borehole, but

it's not working. So the same day, we went there. Very good looking

borehole. We sit in a special team. Excellent results. And we

said, If we open your ball, we pump the water into your water

management system. Within the entire police services, in the

canine unit, there'll be water for the dogs. But we have one request.

We need to run the pipelines from the wall to outside your your

facility, so people in a place called Forest Hill can also get

water. So again, you make water available to the community. So

that's our teams are busy doing that right now. And of course, we

looked at Elizabeth Duncan psychotic hospital. They say water

comes and goes. We looked at a John Pearson TV hospital. Water

comes and goes. So areas like that where the water comes and goes,

the combination of balls that are available from the municipality

and the balls that we are going to drill. And then in addition to

that, we asked the municipality for points. Where do they want to

put JoJo tanks? We brought in 100 JoJo tanks already overnight and

over the weekend to the and we will put those in different points

where maximum need is, where there is no ball from the municipality,

where we haven't drilled a ball, where there's no time to drill a

ball, but you need to get water quickly to the people. And the

advantage of that is the desalination plant water can go

coke has given us 330, 5000 liter tankers, which can carry a lot of

water, and you can put it into all those areas. And one additional

point, we decided this morning, when we heard that the water is

going to run short institutions, old age homes. Homes are

physically mentally challenged, often they just where there's no

ball, or they can't go to the tanker to collect water. We are

now going to distribute bottled water to them to keep them going

for at least two to three weeks, whilst the water issues are being

sorted out from the dam, while the disability try to pump more water

out just to give them some less lifespan, you know, some some

time. And we're going to start doing that from the world.

Certainly the situation is rather dire. And just lastly, Mr.

Suleiman, perhaps we can speak about the rest of the country. I

know you've done extensive work here in gauteng, for example, at

Rahima Musa hospital and Helen Joseph Hospital. Hospitals are

also in desperate need. I do know that the Human Rights Commission

was alerted on Monday about there being no water at Rahima Musa, so

it's a big concern, but perhaps a picture for the rest of the

country, even in KwaZulu Natal where people are in desperate need

of water because of the damage to infrastructure from those floods,

well water requirement is huge all over the country. It's not only

because of how tank. I mean, it's it's lot of areas, like, for

example, if we say some of the dams are full, but there's no the

water management systems, pipes are not working. So even there's a

lot of water in the dam, it can't get rich to people. So in Quark

qua and parts of free state, we've been drawing drilling huge number

of balls there. And again, if you can get an existing ball, we

prefer using that. We've drilled balls in many of the hospitals in

Eastern Cape. The drought situation is way beyond, you know,

Nelson, Mandela Bay only. We've got 15 boreholes in Makanda, we've

got 12. It's left in that. We put in two in club blood. We put in

seven in Adelaide, you know, we and we put in some in Bedford, in

a place called trommy, there was no borehole. People are dependent

on water coming from Adelaide. We put in a borehole water windmill

to drive it. We're identifying other areas to put it in, and then

in Tonga, where you went, we put in 15 balls there, and then

another two we cleaned out. And right now there are other areas.

The whole of itekwinin now is going to be on on water

because the pipes from the neglect.

Have been destroyed, and there's going to take a whole year to fix.

So there's going to be water rationing in many areas. There's

two main issues with water rationing and water security.

Throughout the country, if schools don't get enough water, sanitation

and toilets or 1100 kids in school becomes a major problem.

Like Musa, hospitals that don't get enough water, there's high

risk of deflection, can't clean, can't sanitize, can't wash.

Operations to become difficult washing, along with all those are

huge challenges. We have to look at those options a little later

and see how they're going. But besides tongat and Durban, there

are areas that never had water even before the floods came. We

busy drilling in escort, in amzinto, in in amalti, in Berlin,

and we've got earmarked drilling from Madden Hill, South Coast, and

it's just never going to stop. There's so many areas that water

in South Africa, and we're just going to keep going.

Well. We wish you all the best, and we send you lots of strength

and support, because I think what you're doing is absolutely

phenomenal. They always say that water is life, and many of these

communities just struggle on a daily basis. So we thank you so

much for constantly being that gift to many communities that was

the gift of the givers. MTS Suleiman speaking to us about the

work they are doing in various communities, because we do know

that there is definitely a water crisis, especially in Nelson

Mandela Bay. Now emergencies.