Mercury: Filthy transit camp poses health risk

http://www.iol.co.za/mercury/filthy-transit-camp-poses-health-risk-1.1285773

Filthy transit camp poses health risk

Gugu Mbonambi

The appalling conditions under which people are living in a transit camp at Isipingo has already claimed the life of one person and more could die as a result of waterborne diseases.

This stark warning was issued by residents, who claimed that they were “duped” into moving into the R10-million transit camp by the eThekwini municipality, which assured them that new RDP houses would be built for them “within six months”.

But three years have passed and they are still waiting for the keys to the homes they were promised.

The stench of raw sewage and paraffin assaults your nose as you walk along the dusty road through the closely knit informal homes, cobbled out of flat asbestos sheets, a Mercury team which visited the transit camp, alongside the M35 highway, found last week.

Children play in and drink the murky sewage water running on either side of the transit camp, home to about 700 families from the Bluff, Umlazi, Bayhead and other informal settlements in the city who were “dumped” on the site by the municipality.

There is no electricity, and residents are exposed to high-voltage electric cables running across the wet ground in the camp, a clear sign of illegal electricity connections.

The deplorable and unhygienic conditions at the camp have so far claimed the life of at least one resident, Cleodene Kesram, 18, and many more people could die as a result of waterborne diseases caused by the squalid conditions they live in, residents say.

Lalitha Kesram, 36, who was moved to the camp from Malukazi, Isipingo, three years ago, was told she was being moved to an RDP house, not a one-roomed structure.

“We were duped into coming here, and I didn’t know I’d be living with my children in these conditions. Cleodene was not a sickly person, but on February 18 her entire body began to swell up. When I took her to hospital, the doctor said she had cirrhosis of the liver. The doctor said my child died because of the toxins in her body caused by the filth in this area,” she said.

Vanitha Rathilal, 42, another resident, said they shared six mobile toilets positioned at the far end of the camp, and people often relieved themselves in buckets. There were only two taps that barely worked for the entire camp.

Some residents built their own “long-drop toilets cobbled out of discarded board and other material”.

Isipingo Ratepayers’ Association chairman Darmanand Nowbuth said the association had been trying to get the municipality to move the people to a suitable place for months, but efforts had been in vain.

“The settlement is located between the Prospecton industrial area, the metro railway and the M35 roadway.

“Residents will be exposed to high levels of pollution, which the South Durban Basin is notorious for. That will impact adversely on the health of the community,” he said in a letter to the municipality.

In response to Nowbuth’s letter, the senior project manager of the housing department for the southern region, L Pato, said owing to the lack of suitable land and the time required to implement formal housing, families needed to be accommodated in emergency homes on a “temporary basis”.

“Occupants of the transit facilities will be accommodated for a period of between 18 and 24 months. An amount of about R10 million was budgeted for the establishment of the facility,” the letter read.

A manager for the transit camp, Warrant Officer Annie Naidoo, of the Isipingo police station, said the camp was not a healthy living environment for any human being.

“These people need to be moved from here and be given the homes they were promised. This area is a flood plain; this is not an environment to raise a child,” she said.

In response to questions sent by The Mercury, the municipality said it would “take time to collate all the information” and it would provide responses only by May 10.