Umzinyathi District Municipality has put in place strict measures, to ensure staff and residents are kept safe as possible during the Covid-19 crisis.

District Mayor, Petros Ngubane, said in an exclusive interview with the Courier that the district was looking at the possibility of providing hand sanitisers to households in the deep rural areas, who have no access to shops selling such goods.

“While the last Census said there were 568 000 households in the district, we are looking at providing R300 000 from our emergency relief budget to step in and assist. Fortunately, by cutting costs over the past few years since the last Local Government Elections in 2016, when we came into power, we have some savings. Knowledge and good practice are the first steps to personal hygiene,” he explained.

With constant water-shedding and outdated infrastructure causing constant outages throughout Umzinyathi, the District Mayor said access to clean water was a necessity – and even more so during this time.

“Our fleet of water tankers are hard at work delivering to areas where necessary. We are also looking at installing more JoJo tanks to those areas which have no access to water and are inaccessible by road. However, sadly we have had cases where JoJo tanks have been stolen.”

He confirmed that Umzinyathi District Municipality staff had been provided with hand sanitising lotion, and all members of public entering the building had access to sanitisers.

“By God’s grace, we can get through this.”

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