WC government to fund Cape Nature after veld fires

By Yamkela Xhaso
20 February

The Western Cape provincial government is going to supply emergency funding of more than 2,5 million rands to Cape Nature after a number of destructive wild fires destroying thousands of hectares last week.

MEC for local government, environmental affairs and developmental planning Pierre Uys said municipalities were under enormous pressure in the last financial year. Uys said that over a million rands will go to helicopters fighting fire.

“There are also two teams coming from the Free State working on fire teams that will take away the pressure and just give a bit of a breather to our own teams”

There is also 250 teams based in the Western Cape that are fighting fire and there is another R400 000 allocated for an investigation to get to the bottom of the origin of what causes these fire and how can we prevent and “play a much stronger role in taking precautions ”

There is also R1,7 million allocated to local government, which will include the City of Cape Town and fire district municipalities which Uys said they too went t on major constraints on their resources.

Uys said this will take them forward for at least until the end of March “when we enter our new financial year”