Squalid transit camp presents health hazards
UNHEALTHY living conditions, including leaking toilets, are causing fears of a breakout of serious illness in an Isipingo transit camp.
Following doctors’ warnings of waterborne diseases, City Watch visited the camp this week. A disgusting smell assailed the nostrils as we walked down the passages of corrugated iron sheds. Water leaked from broken taps and many toilets had gaping, rusty holes at the back.
Resident Menzi Kweyama said about 500 people were “duped” into going to the camps in 2009 by the city with a promise to receive RDP houses in less than a year.
Although some had since been settled in new houses in the recently completed Cornubia housing project in the north of Durban, Kweyama said the process had become very slow, leaving many people in squalor. He said he fears that children could die due to the unhygienic conditions.
“It is very hard, no human being should live under such conditions, but we have no other options. This is the only place we have.”
“We have been calling on the municipality to come to our rescue for a long time. Sometimes they come, and promise to come back but they never do. We are still waiting.”
Kweyama said most people were relocated in 2009 from an informal settlement in umlazi after the land they occupied was earmarked for the building of Kwamnyandu Mall.
He said although a municipal employee was assigned to clean the old, broken toilets, leakage was chronic, posing a risk to children who played in murky water running on either side of the camp.
Another resident, Mamsi Sibeko, said she had been told by a nurse to keep her young daughter indoors at all times to keep her safe.
Sibeko, her husband and three children were moved from an informal settlement in Mayville, with the promise that they would be given an RDP home with three months.
Ward councillor Sunil Brijmohan said he raised the issue of the Isipingo transit camp in the committee meeting this week and was assured that the required repair services would be delivered shortly.
“Most people who were employed to look after the toilets had left the transit camp for their houses in Cornubia and the city still has to fill those vacancies.
“But while we are waiting for the city to get new staff for repairs, I have liaised with its Durban Solid Waste department to make the conditions better.”
No comment had been received from the municipality by the time of publication.