Durban - Residents, who lost their homes in the April floods, were jubilant on Sunday when they finally packed up their belongings and left the Truro Hall in Westville where they have been staying for the past five months.
The 47 families who had been staying at the care centre since disaster struck in April moved to a building in Reservoir Hills.
Flood victim Khanyisile Maseko, 24, said she was happy the day to move out of the hall had finally come even though it had taken longer than they had anticipated
“I am glad that we are being moved back to Reservoir Hills, it was difficult living at the hall as it was far from work and the children’s schools.”
Another flood victim Nosipho Mtshali, 35, who was running a crèche from her home before the floods said as a person living with disability, the move meant she would be able to use her crutches freely.
KwaZulu-Natal Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube said significant progress has been made to house disaster victims especially those still housed in community care centres since the April floods.
Dube-Ncube said the province was no longer building Temporary Residential Units (TRUs) but was opting for Temporary Emergency Accommodation (TEAs) instead.
“The option of Temporary Emergency Accommodation where we do not build ‘lindelas’, but house people temporarily as we are building their permanent accommodation, is a dramatic change in approach and testifies to the government commitment to improve the lives of our communities in distress.”
Dube-Ncube said there was a practical plan to move people out of community care centres by the end of November and said they had reduced care centres from 135 to 80.
“We have established a specialised technical team led by the Director-General that will focus on the programme of getting people out of community care centres and all the mop up operations.”
She said as a result of funding requests made via the Department of Cooperative Governance (DCOG) through the National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC), an amount of R406.8m has been received by the affected municipalities to perform various works as follows:
- Ugu District Municipality R2m
- Ray Nkonyeni R8.1m + R11m
- Msunduzi R620k
- Umkhambathini R8.2m
- iLembe R19.5m
- Inkosi Langalibalele R48.95m
- Alfred Duma R14.4m
- KwaDukuza R109m
She said the eThekwini grant of R 185m had been approved and transferred to the municipality on September 7.