Imtiaz Sooliman – ‘There’s a lot of work to do to help flood victims’
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The representative from a disaster management company discusses the flooding in South Africa, which has caused widespread damage and destroyed homes and buildings. They have dispatched their teams and are working to address the flooding, but the lack of infrastructure is due to poor construction practices and road safety standards. The speakers suggest creating a new infrastructure system to prevent future disaster, but the lack of standards and the system of disaster management are the main reasons for the disaster. The national declaration is not something that is out of standards, and the flood in the area of the river caused houses to collapse and road collapse, causing disaster.
AI: Summary ©
Right? Let's talk more about the state of disaster declaration in
regards to the flooding, we're joined by the gift of the giver.
Sounder, Dr India, Suleiman, Doctor Suman. A very good evening
to you, grateful for your time. You work in disaster situations
regularly in this country, how unusual is it to have such
flooding in seven of the country's nine provinces?
Good evening to you. It's not normal to see that kind of stuff.
But then again, the weather pattern hasn't been normal since
the tsunami of 2004
we've seen enormous changes in weather patterns in the country,
the continent and throughout the world. We've seen cyclone a die in
2019
at the same time, when you had the cyclone affecting Malawi, Zimbabwe
and Mozambique, with severe floods in Durban around the same time, we
had a severe flooding in Durban last year, and you could you got
strange weather patterns in the Eastern Cape. You got floods on
the one side and water deprivation on the other side. Similar
situation in the Northern Cape, and again, in gauteng, you've got
floods on the one side and water deprivation, not because of
drought, but because of inefficient municipal systems. So
it's a very and of course, we've been seeing more
bad weather patterns and more storm damage and more destruction,
more often for greater intensity in many parts of the country. Two
years ago, we had a severe storm in amtata, of course, severe
damage. You know, earlier this year,
the floods in London last year, the floods in East London. So the
frequency of the disturbances or the destruction or the natural
disasters is happening more often and getting bigger in terms of the
destruction and the damage it causes in that period of time. And
given the scale of this flooding, this widespread flooding, where
have you as gifted, the givers been able to dispatch your teams
this time round.
We visit in Pomona right now, and lots of work in Eastern Cape,
komanic, Queenstown area, the other provinces you haven't called
yet, so we don't act until we get a call from representatives from
the different provinces. Until that happens, we don't move, we
can urgently. We got calls from Eastern Cape, from Queenstown,
from komani, and there's several municipalities in the area that
has been affected. We've been working there, from there last
week, in this morning, right now, as I'm talking to you, in area
close to maladan, you couldn't enter. 35 more than 35 villages
have been cut off. Then, I mean the municipal people, disaster
management people put some rocks in the gap in the river where the
bridge is broken. And my teams, together with the mayor and the
councilors and local disaster people carried the food items that
we brought across the bridge by foot and took it to the other
side. They made arrangements for somebody for a taxi to come. So
the taxi loaded items and they could take you to villages 30
kilometers away, 8180 families were affected. On the one side,
they came back, went to another side with 61 families came back
and went back again, 45 families. It's all small families, but it's
scattered in several villages. But by road, you can't get from one
side to the other side. You know you need helicopters. And right
now, fortunately, they managed to call a taxi from that side, but
they walked across rocks to the other side to deliver the the food
parcels. So involved in those traders. And Puma Laga, of course,
is overlapping with the popo. It's, you know, it is a boundary
demarcation area. It's part of a complication, so, but we're
waiting. We haven't been called. From there, the other provinces
haven't called us yet. As far as Gauteng, we responded in Alexandra
last week at the Yaks river. I don't know how many times in our
history we've responded to France in the yaksi river. We even put up
a housing village right there in over 105 houses. Fortunately, that
has never been damaged ever again. You mentioned yaksi River and the
Alexandra area. It's a recurring flash point for flooding, because
we know, as things stand, the homes that are both there have
been erected much too close to the banks of that river. So when it
does overflow, it creates a problem. How much of the flood
disasters in South Africa are or can be blamed on infrastructure,
ie,
homes both too close to the banks of rivers, or shoddy
infrastructure where bridges and roads are simply not stable enough
to withstand the force of flood water.
In terms of houses on flood plains, I can't say that short
infrastructure, it's people who live in low lying areas. The case
had done floods was a total disaster last year, but so many
homes getting washed away. The problem is there's no advanced
planning. You know, you tell people, okay, you are the message
is given, don't build on low lying areas, and then you don't give
them an alternative. We need to have a system where alternatives
are created, but to get in buying from communities to say, Okay,
this is alternative. It's slightly higher ground, but it's 500 meters
more, or kilometer more from your work than what it was previously
to have to have that kind of negotiations with people.
Transport costs are very expensive. Depends where the kids
go to school, so the one side.
You know, building houses. It's done by people on the low planes.
But the floods last year, it didn't matter which plane you were
built on, that flood came and destroyed well built houses. There
were landslides. Boundary walls collapsed. I'm not sure that's an
infrastructure problem. A lot of boundary walls had no holes in it,
so the water just dammed up behind the wall and pushed the whole
thing down, which then fell on a house, which then fell, in one
case where we went on a domestic and she died under the rubble. So
I mean municipal planning or municipal laws may have to now
create some type of manner in which poverty walls are built.
That's an example. The other player comes in terms of
infrastructure, because I don't know what standards our bridges
follow. I'm not saying this poor construction work and then entry
the m4 you know the highways in America. I mean, in Durban and
other parts of the country, they must be following a certain
standard and built according to the standard. But it seems the
weather patterns are getting far more severe. That's destroying
those bridges. Do the bridges in other parts of the world get
damaged by the type of weather that we're having, or are they are
the bridges built strongly and the roads build more strongly? I don't
know. Only an engineer can answer that question. Whether we need to
upgrade the quality of the roads and bridges that we're building,
or it doesn't matter what we're building the storm where the
storms are still going to destroy it. I know I can't answer that
question. Only an engineer can answer that very briefly. Dr
Suliman, what are the areas where you are present at the moment been
able to respond the provincial governments? Would they be able to
respond adequately without national intervention, as per this
declaration?
Well, I am a problem with the National declaration. You know,
not that there's anything wrong. What would say you're going to do?
You decline a national state of disaster. The implementation is a
problem for me. You know, when you say national state of disaster
doesn't mean you're now acting four months time, one year's time,
or these it's in response within four hours. The government doesn't
have a track record through the court of responding urgently. You
know, urgent urgency, emergency and disaster are three words, not
in the vocabulary they don't understand the disasters require
urgent response. And the problem with that is the system of
disaster management is the total disaster in the country. We had
ministers calling us when the floods were taking place in the
sun in London last year, telling us our laws don't allow us to act,
to deliver things, to give goods, to get to the people. Can you
please help? And the person said, I'm a minister, and I can't do it.
The system has to be changes, too many different sectors. Is it
disaster management? Is it human settlement? Is it water
sanitation? Is it cocktail? Is it national? Is it provincial? Is it
local? Is it it's police driven? Is it Defense Force? Who's in
charge? And that's a problem. So on the one side, the system is
chaotic. Secondly, when the disaster happens, the LED state,
they declared the state of disaster for covid. How many
hospitals got PPEs in time? In fact, more of the money, about 14
point 7 billion, were missing. The PPEs were not delivered. Oxygen.
Points were not put in. Additional staff was not put in hospitals,
additional equipment was not put in. What kind of a state of
disaster are you declaring the floods in 2022
in in KZN, up till now, a lot of places haven't been rebuilt. The
water system is a mess. The sewage system is a mess. Roads have not
been properly fixed up. Houses have not been built again. How
fast does it filter down to the people? Is the same thing will
happen here? Will we see disaster people tomorrow morning in the
different areas? Will helicopters come? What is disaster management
come? What food parcels be delivered? What people be taken to
share with safety? Let's see that happens tomorrow. That's what you
mean by national disaster. If that's not happening, happening,
just wasting your time declaring an announcement like that. Doctor
ms Suliman, founder of the gift of the givers, good to have your time
as always. So thank you. So.