Mangaung Municipality doing its best to support flood victims

The Mangaung Municipality in the Free State says it together with other stakeholders, is doing its best to assist the victims of the floods that hit Bloemfontein; with the residents of the Caleb Motshabi informal settlement being worst affected. At least 16 people were injured after being hit by corrugated iron sheets that were blown away by strong winds this past weekend.

General Manager of Communications at the Mangaung Municipality, Qondile Khedama, says that they had to evacuate people in some areas.

“If you look at area like Caleb Motshabi, we had to evacuate people there because of the rain that had flooded into their shacks. Currently, those families are hosted in one of our halls; Paradise Hall. Thanks to the Red Cross; they stepped in immediately providing food, providing immediate necessities.”

Khedama says that some of the people have already started reconstructing their shacks.

“What was also interesting; on Saturday when we went back with the leadership, some of the people had started reconstructing their shacks and they were checking with us whether they still have electricity. One of the things that these floods have damaged is the infrastructure of the electricity.”

FOR MORE, LISTEN TO QONDILE KHEDAMA’S INTERVIEW ON SAFM’S SUNRISE: 

Meanwhile, the Mamelodi Baptist Church in Pretoria has called on the public to donate uniforms for the children from families that were displaced following floods in the area in December. This comes ahead of the re-opening of schools on Wednesday.

The residents have been staying at the church since November. The church says people from neighbouring communities have also requested help.

Reverend Thembelani Jentile from the church says they don’t only need help with school uniforms, but with getting birth certificates for children that don’t have them.

“We have kids that do not have birth certificates; we have adults that do not have identity documents. We were promised about two weeks ago, when we were changing from one premier to another, that we will have Home Affairs officials coming to church to assist with the identity documents; that they’ll send a bus to take all the kids to Home Affairs so that they can give them birth certificates because they said mobile Home Affairs cannot assist with birth certificates so they have to go there.”

Reverend Jentile says that they have a list of the number of children and the schools they attend for those that want to donate school uniforms.

FOR MORE, LISTEN TO REVEREND THEMBELANI JENTILE’S INTERVIEW ON SAFM’S SUNRISE BELOW: