Durban - The growing number of homeless people in eThekwini Municipality is having a devastating impact on the city’s infrastructure.
Acting head of the eThekwini Municipality’s Engineering Unit, Thanda Zulu, said homeless people often used the city’s stormwater infrastructure as their storage facilities, resulting in this infrastructure being clogged.
“The homeless people, for whatever reason they use that (stormwater) to put their stuff in there and all of a sudden the stormwater system which was cleaned (the day before) is blocked, that is where the issue of education comes in handy.
“The city holistically will have to see how it deals with the issue of homelessness, they are creating chaos in the city,” said Zulu.
The city said there were more than 4 000 homeless people living on the inner city streets in Durban.
But DA councillor Thabani Mthethwa said he believed there were many more.
“The figure is much higher, I think they only focused on those that are in the CBD, there are many homeless people in Verulam, Pinetown and other areas.
“The city cannot also say it cannot look after these people as it is the city’s job to do so; they should team up with the provincial government and open up rehabilitation centres so those that want to be rehabilitated can go there. Some of these people have homes they could go back to and that would reduce the number of homeless people,” he said.
IFP councillor Mdu Nkosi said the IFP had been calling for homeless people to be profiled in order to identify those that were in need.
“Not all these people are destitute, we have been saying that since 2016 that they should be profiled. Those who need assistance will be assisted and we (could) put measures in place to prevent these numbers from increasing,” he said.
Raymond Perrier, head of the Denis Hurley Centre which is the leading organisation helping homeless people in Durban, commented:
"The problem of homeless people using storm water drains to store their belongings has been known about for at least 8 years, and for 8 years we have been asking the municipality to provide an alternative safe place where people can store their belongings. But nothing has happened. It is easy to blame marginalised groups for the failings of the municipality; it is much better to work together for solutions that help everyone."
He added that there had been an increase in the number of homeless people in central Durban from the 4 000 noted a few years ago due to Covid-19, riots and flooding.
"We suspect that there are 50% more homeless people. Most would love to work if only there was work available. We hope that politicians and municipal officials will partner with us to see homeless people not always as 'the problem' but as 'a solution to the problem'. Sadly, an excellent municipality programme that would have worked with dozens of homeless people to help clean up parts of the CBD was cancelled."
- This story was updated with comments from Raymond Perrier, head of the Denis Hurley Centre in Durban.