KwaDukuza mayor issues heavy rainfall warning whilst on the ground with professionals




The South African Weather Services has predicted a level 5 warning of disruptive rainfalls which might affect KwaDukuza and surrounding areas on Wednesday, 17 January 2024. The rainfalls may lead to widespread flooding.

KwaDukuza mayor Lindile Nhaca has urged communities to avoid low laying areas in order to avoid fatalities while she continues to crisscross various areas which were ravaged by the weekends heavy rainfalls.


A total of seven teams led by senior officials have been deployed to assess the extent of damages. The teams are made up of industry experts including civil engineers, disaster management officials, electricians, town planning professionals amongst others. The physical assessments will contribute towards preparing a comprehensive report to be escalated to various organs of state for possible funding interventions and social relief of distress.


At least three people have been reported to have been missing while physical damages to municipal infrastructure alone are in the millions.

 

KwaDukuza mayor has expressed concern over the ongoing flash floods, “We continue to be anxious about the harsh weather patterns and we strongly attribute such conditions to climate change.

 

We are devastated about the three people who went missing at the weekend and we are as equally concerned about the latest weather warning. These flash floods arrive at a time where we had our hopes high in fulfilling our goal of fully recovering from the impact of the April 2022 floods which had come at a cost of over a billion.


We are indeed taken aback as ongoing preliminary findings do reveal that some of the projects listed under the 2022 disaster expenditure have been affected and this has drastically reversed our gains as we had the goodwill of completing all the outstanding projects by June 2024.

 

It is in this sense that we will be presenting our case to the National Disaster Management Centre to classifying KwaDukuza and other neighbouring areas under a state of disaster where possible. This classification will enable KwaDukuza to source intervention funding to rebuild infrastructure and to enable aid for victims of the floods”, said Nhaca.


Ends

 

Issued by the office of the mayor of KwaDukuza

Enquiries: Sphe Ngobese | 073 784 7822

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