Cape Town – Grieving families are receiving trauma counselling to cope with their loss following a tragic gas leak incident at the Angelo informal settlement on Wednesday night.
The incident left 17 people dead.
According to SABC, Ekurhuleni MMC of Community Services, Bridget Thusi said the deceased were from Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
She said her department is considering engaging the victims’ respective embassies for burial plans.
“The mood is very sombre. They don’t know what to do because I mean, it’s a huge number. One lost six family members and the other one, it’s four. So, they’re making arrangements in terms of taking them to their countries of origin and which is in this case, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
“So, we’re in the process of just figuring out and seeing whether we must get the embassies involved in terms of assisting with the burial,” the report quoted Thusi as saying.
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Meanwhile, Gauteng Premier, Panyaza Lesufi, has supported the community’s call to deploy the army in the province to address the issue of illegal miners and the resulting loss of lives.
He highlighted the need for updated law enforcement mechanisms and a well-resourced strategy to combat illegal mining effectively.
“We are under siege. We are using outdated law enforcement mechanisms in a new era that needs new forms of law enforcement. We have to overhaul our law enforcement response.
“This thing of illegal mining is completely out of control. I am of the view that we need a specialised way of training our law enforcement. They try…[but] the fire power of the illegal miners and the resources that [police] have are not…at the level that they confront these things.
“I am calling for a completely new strategy in confronting this thing. A strategy that is well resourced and the capability of our law enforcement agencies that are at a higher level and they need to respond as if we are in a war zone,” he said.
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Compiled by Betha Madhomu
