Helen Joseph Hostel a disaster waiting to happen - Lesufi

 Lesufi visited the hostel on Wednesday to hand over food parcels and dignity packs comprising of a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, face cloth, body lotion and sanitisers.

He warned that any Covid-19 outbreak in a hostel would be a disaster.

“It needs immediate intervention, if anything happens here, we are in a disaster. So, we are in a crisis situation, so we need immediate intervention, so I think local people and the team are working around that aspect.

“It is one of the issues that we need to attend to, that when doing housing allocations we also need to accommodate people that are in this kind of environment, because you can agree with me if anything happens we are in a serious problem.”

WATCH THE LIVING CONDITIONS OF THE HOSTEL BELOW:

Gauteng MEC for Human Settlements, Urban Planning and Cooperative Governance Lebogang Maile admitted that the hostel’s residents live in squalor.

“We also have a contractor that has been brought on site to deal with issues like sewage and makes sure to attend to other that need to be fixed in this hostel.”

Maile was at the hostel giving out 500ml bottles of sanitiser to be used by residents in their homes.

Five people in the area are under quarantine after being in close contact with a someone who tested positive from the virus.

Maile said the number of infected residents keep rising and this means the provincial government will have to step up efforts to stop the spread of coronavirus.

Listen below: