Government moves to prevent disaster-relief corruption as flood rescue and recovery operations kick in

● The government is looking at bringing in an independent agency to manage some of the billions earmarked for disaster relief in KwaZulu-Natal in a bid to avoid corruption.

Other immediate relief action includes erecting temporary residential units on stands where it is safe to rebuild damaged homes, and giving affected families R8,000 vouchers that they can use to purchase building materials.

Finance minister Enoch Godongwana said yesterday that the agency option is being discussed as a way of insulating the funds from corruption and ensuring they are used for their intended purpose.

The National Treasury has already identified R1bn in contingency reserve funds that can immediately be released to departments to assist families affected by the floods.

The interventions come as police and emergency services yesterday worked through light rain in a race against the clock to locate further survivors who were swept away by the deadly floods, which have claimed at least 398 lives and destroyed 4,000 homes.

More than 100 search and rescue members from various police and emergency units across the country have been deployed to the province. A nerve centre has been set up at Virginia Airport, Durban North, to assist with the volumes of missing people.

One search and rescue member said about 30 cases of missing persons had been reported to the nerve centre and were being dealt with yesterday alone.

“These are just the reported cases. More reports are constantly coming through — so that number is expected to increase. We are not allowing the rain to stop us even though it makes recoveries harder. Teams are coming and going on choppers.

“If the weather gets worse and there are floods in the low-lying areas we are going to have a big problem on our hands. We had no rain on Thursday and Friday so the low-lying areas are a little bit more dry, which made it more manageable in conducting searches.”

Outsurance said damage to infrastructure alone, excluding corporate or private losses, could run into billions — a devastating blow to a province still reeling from last year’s deadly riots.

Godongwana told the Sunday Times yesterday that the independent agency to manage relief funds could either be an existing agency or one in the mould of the Solidarity Fund, which raised more than R2bn to disburse to needy South Africans during the Covid pandemic’s hard lockdown.

“We are looking at whether we can’t appoint an independent agency as project manager. The experience of the Solidarity

Fund is an important one; it delivered efficiency and could account for every cent,” he said.

The Ahmed Kathrada Foundation on Friday called on the government to ensure the funds allocated for the flood disaster are not stolen or misused in the way Covid relief funds were.

“Public infrastructure damaged due to the floods will have to be repaired in due course.

There are likely to be significant public tenders for such reconstruction efforts, which unscrupulous business entities will want to exploit,” the organisation said.

“This is where business criminals and looters will be focused in the hope they will personally benefit. We cannot let the Covid19 and state capture experiences go without learning from them,” the foundation said.

Godongwana said the auditor-general had been roped in to perform a live audit of the funds. The department of monitoring, performance and evaluation was also actively involved in monitoring reconstruction projects in areas affected by flooding.

Human settlements minister Mmamoloko Kubayi told the Sunday Times yesterday her department would draw about R1.6bn from its own funds reserved for such disasters to help rebuild damaged homes.

“If a stand is safe, we will give them a temporary residential unit so they can get out of the halls where they have been moved to. There’s no privacy there, it’s just mattresses, and some of these families need to start preparing for funerals.”

Such temporary structures can be put up in less than a week.

Kubayi said for the remainder of the families whose homes were built on unsafe ground, the government is appealing to the eThekwini municipality and private developers to donate land they are not using so that new homes can be built there.

They are also looking at giving affected families vouchers they can use to purchase building materials.

Her department has successfully piloted a system whereby recipients get a non-transferable voucher of R8,000 to purchase building materials. The vouchers can only be used for their intended purpose, Kubayi said.

Releasing updated figures yesterday, Kubayi said more than 13,500 households have been affected — 3,937 houses destroyed, and 8,039 houses partially destroyed.

A 60% chance of rain is predicted for most parts of the province today, following a level 5 warning about disruptive rains yesterday, but South African Weather Service forecaster Wiseman Dlamini allayed fears, saying the weekend rains would not come close to what was witnessed during the week.

“We are expecting rainfall with scattered showers and thunderstorms, but it will be nothing compared to what we saw earlier in the week. It is too early to say how much rainfall is expected. From Wednesday until Friday clear skies are expected.”

Durban recorded 351mm of rainfall on Tuesday, more than doubling the 2019 record of 165mm.

Gift of the Givers founder Dr Imtiaz Sooliman said more rain means more mud and soil saturation, which hampers recoveries.

IPSS Medical Rescue owner Dylan Meyrick said while the rain could contribute to trickier rescues, it wouldn’t stop police and emergency teams from doing their jobs.

“I personally know a lot of these guys from search and rescue. They won’t stop until the job is done,” he said.

The floods have also hit the province’s tourism industry, already battered from the Covid lockdown.

According to a report by KwaZulu-Natal Tourism, at least 16% of bookings were cancelled in Durban for the Easter weekend — translating to a projected loss of about 30,000 visitors.

“This means a direct spend loss of R30m is projected, with R74m GDP loss and 155 temporary job losses,” the report said.

N3 Toll Concession spokesperson Thania Dhoogra said traffic from Johannesburg to Durban was exponentially quieter yesterday in comparison to previous years.

She said the upside was that there had been only one accident recorded on the N3 since the start of the Easter long weekend on Thursday.

“We had one single vehicle crash on Saturday but thankfully there were no fatalities.