Imtiaz Sooliman – . speaks about the challenges faced while offering humanitarian assistance

Well, let's continue here tonight. Gift of the givers, the non

governmental organization has been assisting in as far as providing

relief to the victims of the floods. The foundation saying as

early as yesterday that it's been inundated with calls from the

province requesting assistance. Well, let's speak to the gift of

the givers. Dr Imtiaz Suleiman, he, of course, is also the founder

of the organization. Dr Suleman, you've had the opportunity to

actually get out and be on the ground over the last 48 hours.

What would you say are the key challenges that you've been able

to identify in as far as providing relief measures to the situation.

Good evening, Kathy, too many people need assistance too

quickly. That's a big challenge. Everybody is stressed out that you

know, the one point we need to remember is everybody is seeing

the big infrastructure damage, the highways, the electrical

electrical substations, the buildings have fallen down. But

the one part is not palpable, is the part of the emotions. People

have been severely traumatized, those who have lost lives, those

are sitting near a stream, and a stream becomes a river within

minutes, and trying to catch a child or a family person being

washed away, watching all your life's positions being washed

away, washed away. So trauma has been an emotional and trauma has

been a huge issue in this

disaster. And then, of course, in that kind of situation, when

people lose everything they're looking for hope, and when you

start coming on and the world starts failing that your team's on

site, you start getting calls from everywhere. Everybody wants

something. And people say, You know what? People, this one has

lost his house completely, is stranded. They don't know what to

go these ones have lost all day informal settlement checks

completely. So it's a number of calls like that. People want

assistance. They just desperate. There's desperation everywhere. So

that's the first challenge, that the number of people that one

assistance is a huge number, but not only in one area, they all

spread out across many, many areas, and within such locality,

there's so many different sections within that locality. The second

big challenge is that the roads are very difficult to pass through

yesterday. It's much better today, but still, there's debris

everywhere at night, you got to be very careful. You can drive into a

rock, into a sand mold, so you have to be very careful how you

drive, and that becomes another issue. You can't get into areas

very quickly. The third challenge is you can't take your big trucks.

The big trucks can get stuck, so you got to take smaller trucks,

sometimes pour them into buckets. So everything now takes much

longer to deliver, and people are waiting. They want stuff faster.

And then the other challenges, sometimes the networks are not

working, so you can't get contact with your people. We haven't had

much of that form, but at times, you know, suddenly we just can't

get through to our people and your phone number 10 times before it

gets through. So those are the major challenges, and then you

have to respond, of course, what do you do with so many people

who've lost their homes? They go into community halls, but

everybody wants to get back as soon as possible. And that's the

next phase where it has decided whether they're going back to the

same land, which low lying and flood plains, or are they going to

be given land somewhere else, which is on the higher plane, but

not like 10 kilometers away from where they are where they are

right now, in many ways, the scale of this disaster, in and of

itself, is unprecedented, and so when we talk about providing help

to the number of people that need it in the multiple areas where

they are right now, where do you even begin in terms of identifying

which areas you reach first and again. This is bearing in mind

that over the weekend, more rain is expected, and I wonder how much

of a window period that then this moment becomes

you have to act fast. You know that's that's the thing. You have

to act fast, but you have to remember certain principles we

don't want to duplicate. You don't act you know. You want to make

sure that the right people get assistance in the right place as

soon as possible. Our advantage is we're not setting this thing up

like 48 hours ago. We're doing this for 30 years. We've done the

sad that the cycloid died and the floods that we had in April 2019

and those networks are still there. Then we had a similar

unrest in July of last year. We use the same networks. And our

period of time, we distributed food to people. So it's we have

those networks so people will call you from different areas because

of that kind of network, we could get feedback and physically visit

sites from Hillcrest, Megan, Hill finetown, Claremont, new Germany,

featherham, tongat, Phoenix, parts of Chechen, mirbank, isapingo,

Kingsway comes into Port Chester and to the management, because and

in all those areas. And we could see from the feedback, okay, what?

To look at more. And then, in addition to that, because our

relationship what municipalities are disaster management, he take

many municipalities said, look, they need 500 families. They need

support. And these are the areas. They give us the list. And when

you go to certain area, they tell us, no, it don't go anymore. It's

changed. The number of people is now increased from what we told

you yesterday. You won't have enough stuff. And that big cause

of conflict let's change, move to another direction. So working with

getting them, getting their feedback, we getting our feedback,

we can get to the areas. And there's always a spiritual element

to what we do. You know, there's always, it's always had, you know,

there's something people may not understand, but we always show

pointed to the right direction. Actually, the first call came at

5am yesterday morning, and the person who calls and says, you

know, you were here last week and you gave us some food parcels in

our area that was in Tonga from Ingo heights, and he said, you

know, the one of the ladies that was in the queue, she got caught

up in the car with three grandchildren and got washed away.

And they said, Please come here. So our teams, when, when they

first to Tonga, they, of course, still remember the lady, because

we can't remember everybody. We see the queue and but at that

point, the lady was recovered and told the children, and then they

knew it was the same area that we just delivered on the fourth of

April, and the same houses that we've been to. Those people are

mostly pensioners. They all. They were in shock. The water was one

liter high in their flats at very short notice, and they had to be

evacuated. And these are the kind of stories that you pick up from

everywhere. And then some years, of course, but we need to have a

spring roll. There's so much of meat in this area. So as a course

coming, you try to go within a straight line Tonga rather than

Phoenix, come towards Durban tomorrow. Along the line you treat

KWA Mashu when you come to Easter penguin site, you do in Abu

asmaazi, so you catch other different areas, and you send

different teams, and you have other people are calling you have

worked with before, and you know they reliable. They're credible.

Otherwise, there's no point taking the call. It's people you've

worked with before. They've never let you down. They're accurate

with the information, and they have their own networks, or their

own volunteers who can help you spear up the process. So that's

the way we operate. But we can't get to all the areas at the same

time, and once we bring this another challenge came the water

is a problem in Dublin right now, the purification plants are not

working, so you now have the added challenge of giving water to even

those people are not caught up in the floods because there's no

water to buy.

Sure it's going to be a tough couple of days. Dr Suleman, as we

head into the Easter weekend, he is the founder of gift of

forgiveness, and undoubtedly, you'll be hearing a lot more from

him about the operations that they're currently involved with

in, as far as assisting and providing relief for those who

need it most. In case it in right now so.