By Nangamso Mabindla
16 March 2007

DUNCAN Village accounts for more than half of the shack fires in Buffalo City, prompting the municipality to launch a paraffin awareness campaign in the area.

The City, in conjunction with the Paraffin Safety Association of Southern Africa (Pasasa) launched the campaign at the Gompo Hall on Thursday, 15 March.

Pasasa's communications manager, Phumzile Nteyi, said that the aim of the campaign was to educate people who lived in shacks about the importance of safety when using paraffin. There were more than 40 million people living in South Africa, and 31 million of them used paraffin.

"So this means that paraffin is here to stay because it is easy to get and affordable. We are now busy working with the government and paraffin sellers to improve the quality of paraffin," Nteyi said.

Paraffin appliances also needed to be "improved' as they were often the causes of fires in informal settlements. "With this campaign we want to improve the knowledge of people using paraffin. The success of this programme depends on us working together with our communities. We really want to limit paraffin-caused disasters."

One of the ways this knowledge would be distributed was through information centres in municipal and provincial government offices. In the Eastern Cape, the awareness campaign would start in the biggest municipalities - the Nelson Mandela Metro and Buffalo City.

People like teachers, nurses and members of community-based organisations would be trained in the safe use of paraffin; they would then take this knowledge to their communities.

The portfolio head of social services, Mankomo Pango, said that it was important that the awareness campaign was launched in Duncan Village, as there had been many fires in the area in 2006.

In that year there were 128 fires in total, destroying 467 shacks and leaving 1 419 people homeless, a 5 percent increase from 2005. Duncan Village accounted for over 70 percent of these fires.

"The partnership between our health promotion unit, disaster management and Pasasa to launch this paraffin safety programme is commendable indeed," she said.

"This association … will go a long way towards ensuring the safety and security of the community of Duncan Village, which uses paraffin on a daily basis."

Pango said that Buffalo City was committed to improving the lives of the people of Duncan Village in a number of ways, including the provision of decent houses, waste management, job creation and poverty alleviation.

"It is hoped that through the recently launched City Development Strategy, the local economy will develop for the better. The municipality is striving to meet the national target of eliminating shacks by 2014."

Owen Becker, from the City's disaster management unit, said that the campaign would foster awareness in communities like Duncan Village. "We focus on fires and the accidental swallowing of paraffin."

He explained that every week between Tuesdays and Thursdays the disaster management team visited Duncan Village to educate the community about the safe use of paraffin.