Imtiaz Sooliman – KZN FOODS Gift of the Givers joins several other humanitarian efforts in KZN

Relief organization, gift of the givers has joined several other

humanitarian efforts in KwaZulu Natal its founder, Dr Imtiaz

Suleiman, joins us now to share their experiences on the ground in

parts of the affected flooding. Now I remember seeing a tweet of

yours, Dr Suleiman, saying that you needed to be for this exact

operation.

It is such a heart wrenching piece of news to even share with the

nation. Tell us where you got involved in what happened

evening to be so I'll first start off what Joaquin said that you had

we started off now we got a call from that same area at 5am on

Tuesday morning, a story about the grandmother and three children,

and the person who called us, he said, you know, people were here

last week, and the grandmother that passed on, we delivered a

food parcel to her, and

we were shocked, the same area in Flamingo heights that were

affected. So our teams went, because they felt very emotional

about that, went to the area, and at that point, the grandmother was

just picked up, you know, they were found the body. And they

found the body of the two children, the third, the fourth

child, the third child was not found, but late in the day, the

child was found, and we met the same people that were given food

parcels to the week before, just a week before, and all those people

are all people, pensioners, you know, and tremendously distraught

within minutes, their houses, their breaths, but one meter high

in water, and did move to higher ground. It was, it was, it was

start of our intervention in KZN. The story of the TLB was also a

personal story. I'm not going to me. One of the pictures I saw on

one of the channels was that this house was belonging to house of a

friend, and then I get the message that this friend's house of the

war. Outward. Sound came through the window into the dining room,

water came through the lady and husband and wife are friends of

ours. She shouts and she worries about her sons in the room, and

then runs upstairs to see her husband. Whilst this is happening,

the neighbor from downstairs, which is around the house, the

same guy, runs upstairs to see what happened to this first house,

the auto medical people and the people in the first house of

medical people while they're running up the neighbor from the

third house higher up, start shouting, be careful. The wall is

falling down on your house. And these people are traumatized

because their daughter is in the house and the domestic is in the

room in her quarters, outside, and as they rush down into the house,

the war falls on the domestic, and she's screaming inside, and they

try to see how they can get out, but it's a mountain of debris on

the domestic and you can't pull out, and they hear screams and a

cry, and it just traumatize them. At that point, a certain rescue

people come. It's still raining, and you know, there's no access to

anything at that moment. You can't bring any cope and roads agenda.

There's no way to carry items and would they bare hands and and

shovels, they try to move up the rubble, but the rain just made it

impossible. And then I got the message. Today, I went to pay a

courtesy visit, and I saw them still struggling. And at that

point, I said, look, they need to, but actually it wasn't a TLB a

bobcat, because to bring it through into the yard, there's a

space there. Also we needed a smaller machine. And as we were

waiting, somebody responded, a person came to try to get a

bobcat, but then it became too late, and they couldn't work

anymore because the house is unstable. But there was, well,

good news in inverted commas and sandwis at the same time from the

kitchen area, we could get the smell of the deceased, you know,

the and we knew the disease was there, because one of the

challenges was, you don't know where the disease is in all that

rubber. Is it higher up? Is it five meters up, five meters down

in a minute, where it's a disease buried? But when you got the smell

of the of, you know, decomposition. And then as they

dug deeper, they found a door. That door belongs to the family of

the deceased domestic. And then little later, they found a wallet,

a file, it belongs to the domestic that was given to her as a gift by

the owner of the house. And when the owner of the house saw that,

she was very, very distraught, because, you know, she was very

attached to the to the domestic. So that process is not over yet,

but I think we're close to the end, that if the bobcat comes

tomorrow morning, I think by sometime tomorrow, the body will

be recovered and a dignified look and then rearranged. It is just so

difficult hearing about these various incidents, but it's

important to share with the world. Doctor Suliman and I've been with

you on

some of these missions. It's amazing the work that your people

do. Just tell us what you need, what you have, and what do you say

to people who, if your voice reaches them right now, who may

be.

In trouble, how to get out of the line of danger?

Well, it's a bit late now, to be honest. You know, for the years,

we always tell people don't belong low like areas. And unfortunately,

you know, given the circumstances, people go to the low lying areas,

they go to flood plains, they go to rivers. They get their water

from there. It's something we have to change the mindset in the

country. But also, we need more stringent regulation that controls

where people can be. Can burn their houses. But secondly, also

to make it fair and accessible and make it, you know,

acceptable to the people the land has given away from servitude,

away from low lying areas we can't do much about. You know, even the

more rain comes in the weekend, you're not going to move 1000s of

people now where you're going to put them suddenly. You know, all

you can do is tell, tell them, be careful when the rain starts

coming, move to higher ground. That's all the information that

you can give right now, you can't tell the move before that, because

nobody's going to move before that. People wait. Are scared,

they will lose their spot. They will lose their sight. Somebody

else will build there. So nobody's going to move away in advance.

It's never going to happen unless we have structured, organized, you

know, formal houses where people live in the houses, and it's well

understood. So that's not what happened. Secondly, if water is

coming up behind your wall, be careful. You may have to move out

of your house, because this was a well established house of the

friends and the board came falling down. In terms of long term we do

now for the future, I think we need engineers and we need

builders to really look at how retaining walls are done. Because

a lot of retaining walls are falling down. Do we need to put

holes in there for what do they escape through there? What has to

be done to rebuild them in a specific way so we don't have this

kind of damage. In addition to that, how our roads burn? Why do

our bridges keeps? Keep collapsing? In some areas, when

there's earthquakes, the bridges don't fall down. You know, do we

have to put mostly more concrete, use different types of formulas

and to see what's being built in other parts of the world? I'm not

saying our engineers are not doing a good job. I'm saying, given the

circumstances, we may have to make them more strong, because we can

see this,

yes, and and also, why do we not have enough helicopters? It's not

the first time we got floods. In case, again, we had floods in 2019

we had floods in Eastern Cape. We need to invest in more

helicopters, more boats, more paramedics, train, more people

along the entire coast. Because when the Cyclones come, when the

floods come, it's always mostly along the coast, starting from

Empire, getting all the way to port Edmonton. And in that area,

we need to have more trained people, more personnel on standby,

because even if you have the boats in the central area, the roads are

not possible. You can't fly helicopter at that point. You know

the immediate helicopter on the weather settles to take people off

from the roof or somewhere else, but we need more boats along the

line. Do we have enough surplus blankets and mattresses stored

away in disaster warehouse? There isn't. It's all NGOs that come

forward with that kind of items. In most cases, municipalities

don't have that. So those are all the time of precautions. But

congratulation to all the people that about the neighbors, such a

rescue people. And you know, everybody's standing together to

help each other. So let's stay with that. Doctor. Suleimano,

obviously, the work is not over, as we mentioned earlier on. More

rains are expected, and I want to talk about the challenges that you

face when you do this sort of work, the rescue and recovery

work. It was quite intriguing to read a report from the eteguini

municipality spokesperson saying that at some point there were some

12 crocodiles that had escaped that there's a hunt on for three

crocodiles. So not only are you dealing with rogue, free roaming

crocodiles, there's lack of connectivity. Vodacom has said

it's working on that. Eskom is helping with electricity, but we

know there are areas without water. There are many people

without shelter, as you say, and the numbers are just too many.

What do you need? How should people get it to you? And what are

the challenges that you're contending with?

I The challenges are simple, it's too many people who need help too

quickly, and it's impossible to get everywhere at the same time.

That's that's the first thing. And secondly, when you get to an area,

you suddenly realize that they were more people, but they

couldn't tell you before because the network was not working, and

then the roads were inaccessible, so you couldn't get to do physical

examination in different areas. And even we do physical

examination, it's impossible to cover the area from from the north

to the south. It's just too many areas to do. So you are dependent

on networks, on priests calling you, on community leaders calling

you on our own networks that we have with 30 years in the

business. We have people on the ground everywhere and during the

summer and race of July last year, and the floods of 2019

and of course, all the things that we do every other day throughout

the country, we build networks. And people do call us and they

give us some kind of feedback, but they also didn't have enough

feedback because they couldn't drive to the areas, and there was

no communication, so people couldn't call them to tell them

what's happening. So when the roads became open now.

Realize it's not five people, it's it's 50 people in Italian so

that's the challenge when you don't have accurate numbers. But I

mean, it's not impossible to sort out. You just go the next day.

It's not a train Smash. You deal with what you can today and do the

balance tomorrow. The challenge is the roads has been the biggest

challenge. For the first time, we couldn't reach areas. You know,

our teams were in Tonga. They got to Durban in the supreme was 15

minutes. It took them two and a half hours changing roads,

changing direction. They just couldn't find a road to get with

Supreme Court. So that was a big challenge in terms of roads, and

then, of course, the volume of supplies that you need, the and

you need big trucks to carry the volume so you can get things

faster. But big trucks can't move on those roads. There's too much

of mud. The roads are damaged. You can't move around, so you need

much smaller trucks, or you need buckies, or you need smaller cars,

and all that just takes so much time. So yes, it will eventually

get done. But the problem is, people are desperate. They need

food straight away. They need water straight away. You need

blankets road straight away. And you know, it's, it's fortunate

that a lot of community people get together, sell their own feeding

schemes for the people in your area, which helps a lot and gives

you time to bring the biggest stuff and the the food passes for

longer that you require when this soft age is over, the meals, the

hot meals, the blankets, the mattresses, the clothing people

are then going to need given if they're going to the same site, we

don't know what's going to happen. Are they going to move the

highest? The highest sites in the informal settlements? All of them

are going to need building material, and that's where the

community can support. The country can support. Lots of finance will

be required for rebuilding those materials. And the other thing

right now, as you know, the water plants are not working well, so

lots of bottle there's liquids for bottled water all our kids in it,

because people just can't buy. It's not available, okay? So we

try to move and contract those water into the into the into city.

Doctor Suleman, thank you so much for speaking to us. Much, much

appreciated. Doctor MTS Suleiman, who is the founder of gift of the

givers, go on Twitter and you'll be able to find their details.