Durban - THE costs of mopping-up, repairs and restoring KwaZulu-Natal’s infrastructure after the past week’s floods was expected to cost billions of rands, said Premier Sihle Zikalala.
Speaking at a media briefing, Zikalala said experts will do a detailed assessment to quantify the damages and the cost of getting infrastructure and services running again.
As at Saturday’s count, the torrential downpours had claimed the lives of 395 people in the province, with 355 of those deaths recorded in the eThekwini Municipality.
Zikalala revealed that 40 723 people were affected by the heavy rains, the number of missing persons were still being tallied, 55 injuries were registered, and 248 schools had sustained damages.
He said priority was helping flood victims with food, shelter, clothing and ensuring that bereaved families received support to bury their loved ones.
“We are also urgently working on getting water and electricity services restored and clearing roads so that life goes back to normal once again,” he said.
Zikalala said the major water supply disruption in eThekwini was due to two of Umgeni Water’s aqueducts being damaged.
“These aqueducts supply water to Umgeni’s biggest treatment works plant (Umgeni Heights), which supplies about 540 megalitres to the city per day, and it has been reduced to 350 megalitres, resulting in many areas running out of water.
“Tongaat water works also suffered major damage and it will take months before it is completely repaired,” he said.
Some critics accused the KZN government of being caught on the back foot, given the fact that the province had a long history of enduring flooding, with the heavy downpours in 2017 and 2019 being the most recent instances.
“The severity of this recent disaster was extremely high and unprecedented, we respond in the way that we were capacitated to, and still found challenges. This is no time for the blame game.
“As a government we have been hard at work mounting spirited interventions,” he said.
Zikalala said they appreciated the national government accepting their request and declaring KZN a disaster area.
The spin-off from the declaration was the financial assistance the province was now eligible to receive, ultimately from the national Treasury.
KZN is set to receive R1 billion from the national Human Settlements Department, in the new week, to rebuild homes and infrastructure.
On whether it was a prudent move to receive tourists with open arms over the Easter holidays, considering the damage to infrastructure, especially the poor state of roads in some areas, Zikalala said it was not proper to turn holidaymakers away.
“We cannot say to people, who booked flights, accommodation and made other plans, don't come.
“As a government we must make sure we assist tourists with their plans. We are ready to host visitors from across the province and country,”he said.
He said KZN anticipated nearly 370 000 visitors, who were expected to spend R1.2bn during the Easter break, the hotel occupancy rate before the weekend was 47% and it was expected to increase.
“Tourism is an important contributor to KZN’s GDP, tourists can still enjoy themselves while keeping safe,” Zikalala said.
However, Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said in a statement that 16% of Durban bookings were cancelled, which would amount to an estimated R30 million loss in revenue over the Easter weekend.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE