Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 16-10-2019
Humanitarian organization Gift the Givers says the drought situation in the Eastern Cape is dire with boreholes and dams having dried up, taps having run dry and no rain in sight.
Areas such as Makhanda, Adelaide, Graaff-Reinet and Adelaide are bone dry and farms are in crisis.
Questions have been raised about why the water crisis in Cape Town received so much national and international attention, when the Eastern Cape is on its knees.
Gift of the Givers founder Dr Imtiaz Sooliman who is in Graaff-Reinet says the situation in the Eastern Cape is extremely bad.
“A drought is very insidious. This is happening for six years and that was has happened in most of the Eastern Cape. The crisis comes when some of these farmers say we can’t support our farm workers anymore. Every farm worker that is put off, seven family members are affected.”
Sooliman says there isn’t government intervention or media attention in the Eastern Cape.
“In the Western Cape too, it’s amidst there was media coverage, media coverage was Cape Town, not the rest of the Western Cape. To the media, the Western Cape is Cape Town which is not true. If you went outside Western Cape, we were involved. There were lots of areas that were completely dry.”
Sooliman says the new water and sanitations minister Lindiwe Sisulu is very proactive and the organisation is expecting a major intervention in terms of water in the Eastern Cape.
Listen to the interview with Dr Imtiaz Sooliman
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