A town that is no stranger to floods—Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal, has for years made headlines for the infamous Klip River breaking its banks and spilling throughout the town.
With this being a major concern on locals’ plates, especially whenever torrential rains set in, it would appear that soon Ladysmith residents will be able to put their minds at ease. This is of course if the Alfred Duma (Ladysmith) Municipality mayor’s words ring true.
However, speaking about the latest floods to damage the Northern KwaZulu-Natal tow, the ANC‘s Josiah Gumede Regional Spokesperson, Bheki Khanyile said the ANC was saddened by the flooding.
“This is another setback that we didn’t expect to hit our town, since it hasn’t been long since the last one. The ANC is with all the businesses and residents who are unsympathetically affected by this course of nature.”
However, Khanyile said the ANC was taken aback by the lack of urgency on the side of the municipality simply because the council approved a budget of R10 million to address this problem last year. “It is now a conundrum of a special sort. The mayor’s sympathy to the businesses and all affected individuals is verisimilitude precisely because his utterances were too economical with the truth.”
Khanyile further added that the IFP led municipality is at the beginning of the second year of its term, but they are lackadaisical. “Complacency is neither a case nor a suspect here but a nonchalant attitude,” said Khanyile.
While the heavy rains left the CBD area submerged, the Alfred Duma (Ladysmith) Mayor, Zama Sibisi said the government entity had secured the necessary valves to prevent the water, stemming from the river, to flow into the town again.
“When we started to experience this problem last year we enlisted the services of consultants and they advised us that our valves were not functioning properly,” said Sibisi. He further explained that the Ladysmith Municipality had to generate a budget to procure the valves. However, the mayor explained that the municipality could only acquire and install eight out of the eleven valves.
Furthermore, Cllr Sibisi said that the reasons for the most recent floods were due to these three damaged valves. But, he did affirm that the remaining valves would be acquired by the end of March 2023.
With Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal set to say goodbye to years of flooding, what are your thoughts?
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