Cape Town - President Cyril Ramaphosa says he has consulted with Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana on declaring KwaZulu-Natal a disaster area and this would allow the government to release money to help people affected by the floods that have claimed more than 300 lives.
Ramaphosa said the funds would have to be released urgently.
However, the budget in February had also released money to cater for previous disasters in KZN.
After an earlier wave of floods hit KZN a few months ago, the National Treasury allocated millions to deal with the situation.
Video: Bongani Mbatha/African News Agency (ANA)
“Medium-term allocations to conditional grants include … R873 million added to the Human Settlements Development Grant to rehabilitate houses, R471m to the Education Infrastructure Grant to repair schools and R784m to the Provincial Roads Maintenance Grant to repair flood-damaged roads in KwaZulu-Natal.”
In the Budget review, the National Treasury said it had allocated millions to municipalities to deal with disaster when it strikes.
“The municipal disaster recovery grant is allocated R26m in 2022/23 and R321m in 2023/24 to reconstruct and rehabilitate municipal infrastructure damaged by the floods and storms in KwaZulu-Natal in 2019 and 2020.”
Video: African News Agency (ANA)
The national and provincial governments are still counting the costs of the damage as mop up operations are still under way.
The provincial government has said more than 240 schools have already been affected by the floods. Hundreds of houses have also been damaged.