Get out there and help Bay’s poor

The soaking rains of the past week have brought both a shower of blessings and a flood of misery to Nelson Mandela Bay. Yesterday The Herald reported on more than 200 people from Missionvale who had to be evacuated following the deluge and there are many families in other low-lying areas such as Chatty, Bethelsdorp, Despatch and even parts of Malabar who live under similar circumstances. Of course we have a right to celebrate the prospect of dams filling up. A jump in dam levels from less than 18% last week to nearly 30% now is great news, but it should be tempered with compassion for those to whom heavy rains bring only devastation.

There are still far too many who live in informal dwellings in less than ideal circumstances and the other side of the weather coin is that heavy rains can destroy shoddily built homes and patched-together shacks.

As one Missionvale resident noted in yesterday’s report, if they had received a house as promised more than 10 years ago, they would have been safe from the downpour.

Municipal disaster management head Shane Brown rightly says the metro has to take “a serious look” at lack of services and problems in these areas. A lack of tarred roads, for example, also adds to the mud and misery.

In this past decade our city has had four different mayors, but no administration has yet provided a leader able to speed up service delivery to an acceptable level in these impoverished areas.

The DA’s Athol Trollip, in particular, has been taken to task for not focusing on the poorer areas.

His ANC predecessors, Danny Jordaan and Ben Fihla, warrant the same criticism. Now we have the UDM’s Mongameli Bobani in the chair and it remains to be seen if he will be “Mr Delivery”.

However, it is time for whoever is in charge of the administration to put this city’s money where its mouth is.

Stop paying lip service to election promises, particularly to the poor, and help those who need it most.

It may seem like a pipe dream, but we look forward to the day when every Bay citizen can enjoy a safe, dry home.