Govt to find money to fix ageing infrastructure – Hlabisa

Cooperative governance and traditional affairs minister Velenkosini Hlabisa says government will mobilise business to pump money into dealing with ageing infrastructure.

“The ageing infrastructure is a problem, which we are attending to in eThekwini, Johannesburg and other metros in Gauteng," he said on Thursday.

"We want to mobilise the business sector because government alone cannot have sufficient money to deal with these issues. When the infrastructure is old, it is not only a problem of the government, it must be a problem of business people because this affects also our businesses and our economy as a country.”

Hlabisa said the ministry will engage with the KwaZulu-Natal government, eThekwini municipality, among other stakeholders, to discuss the relocation of people living in floodplain areas. This follows flash floods that have hit the province over the past few weeks.

Six families could not access their homes recently as they were submerged in water in KwaMakhutha, south of Durban. The area has a small stream nearby which reportedly flooded during last week's heavy rains.

“We need to take hard decisions, especially in KwaZulu-Natal. We are going to engage eThekwini, the provincial government, the traditional leaders, business people, and political leaders. People living in floodplain areas need to be relocated soon before they are washed away," said Hlabisa.

"We are living in a time of bad weather, climate change, and every time when it is raining, we start panicking.

Because we need to reallocate the resources from human settlement, shelters that give dignity to our human beings are being built in KwaZulu-Natal to remove people in these areas that are not good for human settlement.” 

Hlabisa said they were also looking at improving infrastructure. “Where infrastructure has been destroyed, we need to explore resilient infrastructure to cope with disaster and encourage the municipalities to go for insurances of the infrastructure,” he said.

“If a bridge has been rebuilt, insurance must be persuaded because we see once the project is over, it is washed away a few months down the line. So now exploring insurance on our infrastructure is going to assist us to ensure that we do not spend money over and over again.”

Hlabisa said in regards to the disaster in eThekwini, the presidential task team is working hard to ensure the drainage system is being attended to.

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