Govt flood relief response too fragmented, warns Dr Sooliman
The founder of humanitarian organisation Gift of the Givers says a lot needs to be done to better prepare KZN for future disasters.
Dr Imtiaz Sooliman and his team have been on the ground in the aftermath of last week's floods, joining other crews in relief and recovery efforts.
”We need more helicopters stationed along the coast, more boats, more trained personnel, and the most important thing is, we need to establish walkie-talkie stations around the coast because the networks can get knocked down and walkie-talkies can’t get knocked down.
“And we need to look at rebuilding boundary walls, what special routes we can do. Too many boundary routes fell down. Bridges, roads, we need to build them slightly differently to make them stronger.”
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He says the different departments in government need to work together.
“For disaster (relief) to be effective you need one common control centre. You can’t have five divisions in government responding to it.
“In disasters there are lot of evils, everybody is right, everybody wants to do their own thing, everybody wants to be in charge of everyone else. It can’t work like that.”
Dr Sooliman was speaking at East Coast Radio's KZN Floods Relief Donation Drive, of which Gift of the Givers is a partner.
People and businesses have rallied around those affected by the floods, dropping off essential relief items and pledging donations since Friday morning.
The sum of money raised by mid-afternoon on Friday was R6.4 million.
