Imtiaz Sooliman – Sooliman on relief efforts in Jagersfontein

You're listening to the President's response to residents

in Yahoo sundae in the Free State, where they have been speaking to

him about concerns around a mining area there where a dam collapsed

yesterday. So far, we know that at least two people are confirmed to

have died, dozens more still in hospital, homes and other

infrastructure also damaged. Eskom pardon was telling us yesterday

that power lines were affected. In fact, the President also

acknowledged the president of the local mayor. And speaking of the

local mayor, there's a post that you may or may not have seen, in

fact, online that's been shared that he made in February of last

year, 2021 where he said this, I'll read just a bit of it. He

said, 10 years ago, the mining company came to yakufundayne with

no water plan for its operation, because at the back of its mind,

it had concluded that for its operation it would bribe

politicians. That's an allegation that he made in the post on

Facebook last year. He said, about a few meters away from this non

compliant dam are houses of the masses of our people who are

automatically subjected to dangerous conditions. And that's a

post that's now been shared widely on social media, people saying

that there were warnings more than a year ago that that dam posed a

danger, a risk to the local community. Yacha sentene

development, which is the company that owns that operation, has said

that it does not believe that there's any hazard posed by the

wastewater that's been flowing as a result of that burst will get

more from that company, hopefully within the hour. But someone else

is joining us now to talk more about relief efforts in Yahoo

spontane as Dr India Suleiman, the founder of the gift of the givers

organization, doctor, we spoke to you 24 hours ago as you were

mobilizing your troops, so to speak, in order to respond to this

disaster. How much progress have you made?

Good afternoon, we've made excellent progress to mckelet. Our

trucks have arrived from Bethlehem, from Eastern East

London, and from Johannesburg. The truck from kitty matters on its

way. The solutions have already taken place in areas. We've

surveyed the area. We've seen the difficulty. We've seen the

hardships. We've already set up motion to get other supplies into

place from other parts of the province. Let me explain it a

little better. The primary need was bottled water, which we

brought immediately. And in fact, my teams walked across the sludge

to people who were caught up in charlesville, who couldn't get

out, who didn't move out, who couldn't get out, who couldn't

move out, both types of people because they wanted to stay in the

area. As we walked to them, they took the bottled water and started

drinking immediately. They've been thirsty since yesterday morning.

They also made arrangements to give out we gave out food. We gave

out blankets, and we even gave out,

I'm sorry, food items in bunk for people in the area itself. And

then, of course, the community hall and the church where people

have gathered. We're giving them supplies in bulk, again, bottled

water, mattresses, blankets and food items to cook. Whilst we were

doing that discussion, you know, we realized that a lot of sheep

had died. They were washed away, and those that survived drank from

the toxic liquid, and many of them got ill, they urgently need

antibiotics and a special milk for the lamb. The ewes are dead, the

lambs are now left without milk. So special ingredients, special

milk is required for the lambs and antibiotics to help them from a

lung infection. We've procured that, and we're expecting that

tomorrow morning, which will then be made available to the farms

association to have the lamb. That's crucial, isn't it, doctor,

because one of the community members is, in fact, a

subsistence farmer, and she was saying that is one of the main

concerns. If this is not addressed quickly, they may possibly be a

longer term ripple effect for the community, ie via employment or

even what's available to eat? Yes, that's very, very true. A large

number of the animals have been washed away, and of course, a

large number of them have been affected by the toxicity. So

whatever we can save, we need to do that. It's a long term, right?

It's about jobs saving jobs saving food security and making sure that

the farmers don't disappear altogether, or this massive job

losses. I mean, there's animal losses in one of the incidents we

heard, and

was very, very sad, we had put all his sheep together. It was the

good auction sometime this week, and the entire flock of sheep that

was supposed to adoption, all of the sheep were washed away. He now

has nothing to sell on auction, and that has affected farmers in a

large way, economically, and it's a recurring problem, like for the

drought in other parts of the country, there's so many farmers

have lost sheep. We can't afford to lose what's living, and we have

to do everything possible to save them, and in that, we save the

jobs and the livelihood of people. One last question. Then you have

given comment I was looking this morning where you were concerned

about a hazard posed by the wastewater flowing from that dam.

The company that runs the area says that it's convinced that

there's no danger posed by that. Am I right to say that you are in

possession of a different set of facts? Yes, no, I don't agree

with.

That this is toxic material inside the gap that the people on site

have said that the sheep have died drinking this, the toxic water.

And more than that, which hasn't been nearly mentioned a lot, the

fish have died in the river. They know the toxic product, once it

went into the river, the fish have started dying and started

surfacing. Now, in a normal flood, that doesn't happen. You know,

normal rain, they survive in situation. So there's obviously

some type of potent pollutants inside that water is causing the

fish to die. Some people have gone even further and said that if that

river reaches other dams in the area further down that, that water

in those dams will become polluted, and people in those

areas are gonna have a problem for drinking water. So I can't see how

the mining company or ever spokesman said that it's not

toxic. It's incredible to make a statement like that. Dr, MJ

Suleman, thank you, as always, for the work that you doing for

communities such as the people of yachts and day.