Businesses including tourism on the coast north of Durban say the on-again off-again closure of some of the city’s beaches due to high E.coli levels has been devastating.
The eThekwini Municipality announced that Umhlanga Main Beach would reopen on Christmas, while Umdloti beaches had recently opened. But despite the opening of these beaches, operators of holiday accommodation say it’s too little too late as they are counting their losses.
Following heavy rainfall and gloomy weather over the Christmas weekend, the skies cleared just in time as the Umhlanga main beach reopened. The eThekwini Municipality reopened the Umhlanga Main and Umhlanga Bronze beaches.
The decision to reopen the beaches was taken after results of the latest water testing were released, confirming that the water quality is safe for swimming.
Locals and tourists used the opportunity to take a dip. Businesses on the promenade say the closure of the beaches impacted them significantly.
“I am over excited I can’t explain my excitement because we had it real tough here, there has been no business, first it was covid-19 and now E. coli, I am just glad that everything is back to normal,” says Umhlanga vendor, Faizel Mohammed.
Those who forked out monies and booked accommodation are breathing a sigh of relief whilst others revealed that they almost cancelled their holidays.
“I am so happy that the beaches are open. The concern was that we were travelling from Soweto not knowing what was going on. It’s a win for us now,” a holidaymaker explains.
“The children have been troubling us and we are very excited even the kids that the weather has cleared up and that we can come to the beach to lie on the sand and just have some fun,” another holidaymaker said.
“I am from Joburg and I can’t come to Durban and not swim, so I am very happy now, I feel like I’m in Durban,” explains a holidaymaker.
“You know it’s open but we are still very hesitant and nervous to swim, it’s unfortunate but there is so much anxiety. We have been here for a few days but I think we won’t swim,” another holidaymaker reiterates.
Umdloti beach, a hub for holiday accommodation and restaurants had very few bookings. The tourism sector says the loss of revenue can run into millions.
“In December in Umdloti you can’t even get accommodation last minute, now we have plenty, we use access disks for residents to get to their houses because the beaches are full for the last twenty years we have had roadblocks preventing people from coming in when it’s too full and this year we haven’t put up a roadblock because there are not enough cars, we haven’t reached 50% yet. People who booked in are checking out early so tourism is completely down, it’s very quiet,” explains the Precinct manager of Umdloti smart village, Vicky Schnetler.
Despite the closure of beaches, the provincial government says tourist numbers have not dropped.
“Indeed, we are worried that it might impact tourism but so far, the number of people that are coming to KZN is not drastic as down for us. It is to find a way of quickly resolving those problems, particularly of the infrastructure, but we stand ready to welcome our visitors, we have thousands of coastlines that people can still enjoy in KwaZulu-natal,” says KZN premier Nomusa-Dube Ncube.
Meanwhile, the eThekwini metro says they are continuing to test water quality to ensure safety for all.
