Six road facing portable toilets for more than 200 people. That is how the residents of the Cato Crest transit camp have been living since the flushing toilets provided by the eThekwini Municipality were closed.
“They kept blocking (up) because they were used by so many people,” said resident Nelly Khumalo.
She and her husband and three children were moved from an informal settlement in Mayville and brought to this transit camp of corrugated iron houses, with a promise they they would be moved in three months.
In the eight years she has been waiting, Nina has had another child, one she does not let play outside because of the stagnant water puddles from the taps and toilets.
She hoped something would come of the oversight visit on Monday by the DA national spokesperson on human settlement Solly Malatsi and his deputy Mbulelo Bara.
The pair were accompanied by the party’s provincial human settlements spokesperson George Mari on a walkabout of the camp.
Malatsi said the “inhumane living conditions the residents were subjected to showed an indifference...by the eThekwini Municipality”. He said it was a failure to uphold people’s dignity.
The DA delegation also visited the lost-cost government housing in Waterloo and council flats in uThongathi.