Cape Town – The Disaster Risk Management department of the City of Cape Town dug trenches in Khayelitsha on Tuesday as part of its flood prevention strategies.
Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) staff were employed to dig the trenches to divert flood water away from informal settlements.
The plan is to roll out the project to other informal settlements too.
"I joined the new Disaster Management Flooding Relief team which we launched to address water pooling and flooding that affects some communities during the rains," JP Smith, mayoral committee member for Safety and Security; and Social Services, said.
"Today the new unit of 20 people were working in Khayelitsha to dig a water channel to drain water which made a road impassable into the wetland. I got the idea from residents in Zone 30 in Langa last year and promised that we would try it as a pilot this year.
"If it works as well as it appears to be, it may well become a standard part of our winter readiness planning and be an annual intervention to bring relief to flooded areas while TDA proceeds with gradually formalising the storm water systems in informal settlements as they have been doing.
"The team is learning on the job about the gradient levels of such channels in order for them to work and took their own initiative to fill in the potholes in the informal road with the soil they had dug out of the channel.
"We are speaking to the Roads Department about adding cement u-channels to allow these interventions to last longer," Smith said.
* The Cape Argus is also running a #CleanYourHood campaign. Send us your stories of how you're keeping your neighbourhood clean and your suggestions about how to deal with similar flooding and waste challenges, email your stories and pictures to [email protected]