Informal settlements and flooding

THE problem with the informal settlements situated on flood plains is really tragic but I am not sure how the City can avoid this problem when the residents do not listen to the warnings and just carry on building in those areas.

Judy-Ann Stevens, spokesperson for the local ANC caucus in the City Council, must be lacking something or have no understanding of the problem when she says, “Informal settlements, no matter where it is started, are a direct result of the City’s inability to provide adequate housing to all those in need”.

This when there is no city or country in the world, and certainly none of the ANC-controlled ones, that could supply housing for informal settlers at the rate at which they continue to arrive in the city. And sadly, she criticises but does not offer any solution – if the ANC has one up its sleeve, which I doubt.

Her government has lots of vacant land in suitable areas around the city and so why not recommend that they give it to the City to use for dry informal settlements.

DAVID WANTLING |