Shack dwellers says their living conditions makes social distancing a challenge!

By Sithembiso Khuluse

Team Chad is an organisation founded by Sheldon Francis in 2014. They do youth programs and educate youth about human rights throughout high schools in eThekwini.  For the past six years, they have done workshops and held events under the Right2know banner.

During this Corona pandemic the organisation has been doing feeding schemes in the underprivileged informal settlements everyday for the past three weeks, and the sponsorship have come from community members, friends and companies who have stepped up to assist.  Sheldon is also a PWG member for the Right2know in KZN and also when working with all these local informal settlements, he uses this as an opportunity to mobilize information on their rights.

The major challenge they are facing during this time is funding . “We have a huge crisis where over 500 people are using the same toilet within the informal settlement and there’s no sanitizers or soap available for them. We go and feed these communities every day with the risk of getting infected and not once in these 3 weeks have we been tested”, said Sheldon.

He says this is a real challenge in the communities since the testing process is slow and you hardly see any educating initiatives from the provincial government rather those they try themselves as most of these communities are poor and those who do not have TVs cannot go to neighbors. “We are seeking government help with food, clean toilets, sanitizers and soup. People are living crowded in shacks and their living conditions makes social distancing a challenge.”  He says they have seen grocery hampers been given to people who are living in houses and people in the shacks must depend on the organization like Children Have a Dream every day for something to eat.

 “We as the TEAM CHAD and other organisation are doing what we can  but also the government needs to visit these areas and prioritize them”, he added.