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[File Image]: Residents walk across a flooded road following severe weather.
The KwaZulu-Natal department of Human Settlements says it has concluded the purchase of Montclair Lodge to accommodate flood victims.
The lodge that previously belonged to Transnet is in the south of Durban, has more than 260 rooms and can accommodate up to 600 people. Amongst the first displaced residents to be given temporary accommodation at the lodge, will be the flood victims who were evicted this week from the Bayside hotel in Durban.
More than 150 flood victims had to sleep in the streets in the cold, after the owner evicted them due to payment issues. The department says it has paid close to R200 million to different hotels to provide shelter for more than 1200 displaced people after the floods in February and March in Durban.
The MEC for Human Settlements in KwaZulu-Natal Siboniso Duma says after the refurbishment of the lodge, the first occupants are expected to move in by December.
“We wish to announce that we have bought this facility, the Montclair Lodge from Transnet. We have paid R33 million for this facility, which will be repurposed to accommodate victims of floods. The transfer from Transnet to us took place on 31 May 2025. In other words, we will no longer use private facilities as part of the Temporary Emergency Accommodation (TEA). A professional engineer will be appointed before the end of July 2025 to do a basic assessment, which will determine the scope of work for the refurbishment. A minimum of R35 million will be set aside for the refurbishment, while R4.2 million has been made available for the basic assessment.”
Duma says they have discovered that some of the displaced victims don’t qualify for temporary emergency accommodation.
“The findings of the verification exercise are the following: Currently there are 186 individuals who do not qualify to live in TEA, the verification process uncovered that some individuals have government-built RDP houses. And the government cannot build an RDP house twice. It is against government policy; Some individuals earn enough and above the stipulated amount of money to qualify for an RDP house. Therefore, they should not be accommodated in TEAs. We uncovered that some individuals are foreign nationals, and we also uncovered that some individuals that have benefited from the government in the form of newly built houses have brought relatives to these TEAs.”
