Broadcast Type: News; Professor Christo Coetzee from the African Centre for Disaster Studies at the University says the R1.5 billion allocated to flood-hit municipalities is insufficient for significant impact.
northwest university's african centre studies for disaster professor christo coetzee says the nearly one and a half billion rand allocated to flood hit municipalities is not enough to make major impact a quarter minister velenkosini hlabisa funds says the will go to councils in gauteng eastern the cape the free state north west and kwazulu natal over six thousand households than thirty and more six thousand people have been affected by heavy downfalls in recent weeks four billion i think initially sounds great consider but if you it across all the provinces amount and the of damage to infrastructure areas in all these and and the need for having infrastructure new being built then one point four quickly billion becomes not a lot of money actually and and and all the money up gets split into small pieces that doesn't necessarily a make lot of difference in rebuilding infrastructure terms of reference no so it doesn't really up and add additionally the problem becomes is do the how officials actually are they spend the money able to before financial the end of a year and i think that's where of the biggest problems one comes in how respond to disasters we is the timeframe in which we have to do for instance an infrastructure project that takes a long time plan to actually and then to actually implement means you won't that spend that in a financial because you year don't spend that money financial year it gets in a get inevitably goes back to treasury coetzee urges government to focus on more raising awareness around disaster risk reduction terms in of you invest more in risk reduction you save fifteen dollar on disaster response so basically if you put that into rands cents you save a lot and more by investing and risk reduction in the long run in the context especially of climate change that that's as well roads another spanner in the world we don't actually know the extent of disasters our are going to change what the impact in future would be it would be unsustainable just to respond to that from a financial sense especially if we're talking about catastrophes that more than we've ever seen have before so we to be proactive and look proactive at more investments