Families of George building collapse victims still receiving psychosocial support
CAPE TOWN - The George Municipality said that the families of the victims of the George building collapse were still being provided with psychosocial support.
Tuesday, 6 May, marks exactly one year since a partially built 42-unit block of flats caved in, killing 34 people.
The disaster triggered an 11-day search and recovery operation.
Police took the lead at the site after all 62 artisans were accounted for, before it was handed over to the labour authorities.
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Some family members of victims of the collapsed George building told EWN before that they hadn't received any support from the government or the company responsible.
Head of the Garden Route Disaster Management Centre, Gerhard Otto, said they did have challenges verifying most of the foreign nationals rescued and their families.
"We found that some of them had their papers in their pockets and that is how we realise that some of the people that we found were not part of the initial figure given as part of the faces that we saw on the photos that we were supposed to be looking for."
He said the language barrier also made it difficult to provide psychosocial support.
"You cannot provide psychosocial support to someone if it's not in their mother language. The fallback is that you must go to the mother language."
Otto added that out of the 34 people killed, only 16 were South Africans.
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