Joburg Mayor leads Ad-hoc committee into flash floods recovery

City of Johannesburg Executive Mayor, Kabelo Gwamanda led the Ad Hoc Joint Committee on Flood Disaster Relief and Recovery in Soweto to assess the impact of the floods that occurred last December.

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The oversight visit which began in Tshwane on the 19th was joined by members from the Provincial and National government as well as officials from the City of Johannesburg at the Soweto Theatre.

They were briefed with a full picture of the extent of damages caused by the floods, and the immediate and medium term interventions that have been implemented six months post the devastating floods.

Delivering the opening remarks, Mayor Gwamanda said, “The purpose of the presentation is critical for our communities, especially those that are poor and disadvantaged.

“When we were proud as a city, of our world class status, we became complacent to what may go wrong.

“We were caught in a situation where we had to respond to what we have never known as the City of Joburg which is a disaster.”

He said the oversight visits were a ‘fact-finding mission to realign, restructure and fix’ what had gone wrong.

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“We need to prepare ourselves with the support from both the provincial and national government for any kind of disaster. Our state of readiness is critical for the country because we are the leading economy in the country,” the Mayor continued.

The floods are considered the worst widespread hailstorms, causing extensive destruction to the city’s infrastructure and residential properties. At the time, 16 people were confirmed to have lost their lives in the floods.

Patrick Phophi, Executive Director of Human settlements who delivered the presentation on the severity of the floods assured the committee that the city has learnt from recent floods and the process to do things differently had begun.

“The infrastructure was heavily affected and this has caused us to react and find ways on how to deal with the issues.

“Within the week ending December16, we had to assess and find out which areas were affected and we found that in terms of disaster management by the City, we had to provide temporary shelter, formal and informal structures.”

He said affected beneficiaries/households were 3 378 indicating that among those which needed immediate intervention were in Kliptown and Nancefield where they had to aid families with students who were writing exams.

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Phophi further spoke to the interventions undertaken by the city in all the regions to prevent disaster, emphasizing that permanent resolutions were needed to aid affected communities.

The oversight visit began in Meadowlands where 400 houses were heavily affected by the heavy rains damaging property and infrastructure.

“As you know, there is an emergency fund of R68 000 and even though the properties are privately owned, we need to assist them.

“That is the submission we have made and we are waiting because we had indicated that each family should get that from the emergency fund so that they can fix whatever damages that were as a result of the floods,” Phophi said, referring to the properties in Meadowlands.

The committee also visited the Nancefield Hostel, Winnie Mandela Informal Settlement in Kliptown and Mosquito Valley in Lenasia.

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The city has set a time frame of September 2023 to ensure that the required services are provided before another rainy season begins. The committee is set to return before September to assess the progress that would have been made by that time.

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