City of Johannesburg’s (CoJ) Member of the Mayoral Committee for Public Safety, Clr Sello Lemao, handed over 150 para-safe stoves to women-headed households at the Denver informal settlement on December 8.
The CoJ hopes the para-safe stoves will limit the risk of shack fires.
The handover came after 250 families at the informal settlement were left homeless when a raging fire razed their shacks to the ground on Tuesday last week.
“The victims, mostly women, lost all their belongings in the fire. They were temporarily accommodated at a nearby hall after the tragedy. In the spirit of 16 Days of Activism against Violence on Women and Children, we have decided to give the para-safe stoves to women- headed households.
“We will never abandon residents in an hour of need,” said Clr Lemao.
The locally produced para-safe stoves, which have been approved by the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS), have been designed in such a way that they automatically switch off when they accidentally topple over, killing the fire.
Obakeng Shuping, of the Johannesburg Emergency Management Services, said para-safe stoves were a practical way of creating public safety in communities and in mitigating “future problems”.
Community leader Hloniphile Khumalo said, “People are appreciative of the little they have received from the city. The threat of a fire in our settlement has now been minimised. We’re now going to sleep peacefully at night.”
It is believed the most recent fire started when a primus stove in one of the shacks toppled over, setting the settlement alight.
The fire quickly spread through the settlement.
