Ekurhuleni Mayor Mzwandile Masina says there are still a number of homeless people who are on the street and need to be sheltered during the 21-day lockdown period.

Masina was conducting a site visit of the Coen Scholtz Hall in Kempton Park on Friday, which is being utilized as a temporary shelter for the homeless during the nationwide lockdown.

The City of Ekurhuleni through the COVID-19 Response Joint Operations Centre formed a task team that is supporting the Gauteng Provincial Government’s efforts in caring for the homeless.

The Coen Scholtz Hall in Kempton Park is one of four shelters in Ekurhuleni that is currently housing about 124 homeless males and females providing them with clean clothes and three meals on a daily basis which have been donated by various NGO’s including the Jamiatul Ulama South Africa.

Masina says he is Satisfied that the homeless are being taken care of as the country tries to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

“There is still quite a number of people who are still on the street and we continuously talk to them because we don’t want to force people to be here. We talk to them, make sense about this disease of COVID-19. Many have really been very responsive and I am quite confident that in no time we should have all them housed in different properties that we have around the city.”

Jamiatul Ulama South Africa’s Ml Obeidullah Boja has urged the Muslim community to continue their donations to assist the homeless that are being taken care of at the shelters.

“Alhamdulillah the mayor was here today, he was very happy at the contributions of the Muslims. We are feeding three meals a day to these people and it is a long process, its going to be for the next two to three weeks.”

Masina says the Jamiatul Ulama has assured him that they are going to scale up the supply of food to accommodate more meals for the homeless at the shelters.

Faizel Patel

(Twitter: @FaizelPatel143)