KZN floods ‘worst natural disaster in SA’ – Sooliman
FOR SEVERAL weeks now, a number of memes depicting Imtiaz Sooliman have gone viral.
The most popular one is an image of Sooliman’s face superimposed on Captain America’s body, with a caption that reads “Captain South Africa, the People’s Hero”.
The CEO of Gift of the Givers does not have any social media profiles so he is unaware of the images.
“I have no comment on that,” Sooliman said this week, adding that he was “only the medium delivering the assistance”.
He said: “Mine is a calling, an instruction from a spiritual teacher, a Sufi master from Turkey, to serve people unconditionally for the rest of my life.”
Gift of the Givers has helped in disasters in 45 countries with R4.5 billion over a 30-year period
He confirmed that the Gift of the Givers would continue to assist in KwaZulu-Natal and was unsure how long it would take them to address the devastation caused by the floods,which have claimed more than 400 lives so far, with more still missing.
“We are still rolling out thousands of food parcels to schoolchildren and communities, as well as bottled water to schools, clinics, hospitals, mortuaries, old age homes, orphanages, the like, and to communities.
“We are moving drilling teams into uThongathi to drill boreholes (the water system will take eight months to repair).
“We will install JoJo tanks where necessary.
“The entire intervention to make a significant impact will require an input of R300 million.”
Sooliman said they were also in discussion with the police to fund the purchase of a large number of sniffer dogs.
“The absence of sniffer dogs during the search and recovery mission was impossible to ignore. The SAPS have virtually no sniffer dogs.”.
Sooliman, who was on the ground, said his team had been on hand to help a day after the floods.
“During the day our teams were accessing areas and getting feedback from our networks to areas we couldn’t get to given the damaged roads, debris and inaccessibility. We had the whole picture by Tuesday evening.”
The organisation provided food for hot meals, bottled water, blankets, mattresses, new clothes, sanitary pads and diapers in locations stretching from Pietermaritzburg to eMdloti on the North Coast and Port Shepstone on the South Coast.
Sooliman said they arranged to bring in their own search and recovery teams because more people were missing than they had initially thought.
“By April 14, we realised there was an increasing demand for water because the water management system, pipes, filtration plants were washed away or severely damaged. We started with bottled water roll-out to hospitals, clinics and communities.”
Sooliman described the floods as the worst flood or any natural disaster he had witnessed in his lifetime in South Africa.
“The infrastructure damage to roads, bridges, electrical substations, water pipes and treatment plants, hospitals, clinics, schools, businesses, formal and informal homes has been unprecedented, 14 000 homes affected with more than 40 000 displaced, 435 dead, and 240 known missing (we believe it is substantially higher).”.