Cape Town - Humanitarian organisation Gift of the Givers and local businesses continue to assist Komani flood victims, and a baby has been born amid the dire situation.
This follows after about 1 000 people were displaced from their homes and moved to community halls and places of safety after heavy rains caused a nearby dam to overflow on Wednesday.
Gift of the Givers Eastern Cape co-ordinator Corene Conradie said the situation in Komani was bad and they had run out of space as the number of homeless had increased.
Conradie also confirmed that amid the crisis a baby was born but the mother was missing and the baby was being attended to by volunteers and the Department of Social Development.
“When we spoke to the father of the baby, he told us that the mother had gone to town and ever since then she never returned, and he is worried that the might be the victim of the flooding as well,” Conradie said.
Conradie said the Social Development Department, local businesses and neighbourly Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality citizens had provided and continued to deliver necessities such as food, blankets, mattresses, toiletries, clothes, shoes, sanitary towels and many other gifts.
She confirmed that they would be spending three days in assisting residents until the situation improved.
Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality also said that Eskom had temporarily suspended load shedding for Komani until Saturday.
Meanwhile, Democratic Nursing Organisation of SA (Denosa) provincial secretary in the Eastern Cape, Veli Sinqana, said he hoped that President Ramaphosa, in his State of the Nation Address (Sona) tonight, will put more focus on the implementation of the NHI as a means to access quality health care by all South Africans, especially those in rural provinces like the Eastern Cape.
“On matters around NHI, Denosa Eastern Cape is particularly interested in the plans to improve the facilities in terms of resources and infrastructure outlook, so that they could be in a better position to be certified by the Office of Health Standards Compliance (OHSC), so they may be able to offer NHI services for patients.
“Considering the unreliability of back-up generator systems in the health-care facilities, Denosa Eastern Cape reiterates its call for health-care facilities to be exempt from load shedding as a matter of urgency as optimal health-care services are no longer rendered to patients in these facilities,” Sinqana said.
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