Frequent water outages, coupled with additional hours with no water due to a municipal water
supply pump shutting down during periods of load shedding, has severely compromised the
Summerveld-based Upper Highway Baby Home’s ability to deliver its much-needed services.
Located near Hillcrest, in the Outer West region of eThekwini Municipality, the Upper Highway Baby
Home – a flagship for child protection – provides full-time care for abandoned babies until they may
be reunited with their families or adopted into loving families of their own.
With the constant availability of water critical to its work, the solution lay in drilling a borehole, an
expense which proved beyond the means of the facility, until the South African Muslim Trust
(SAMCT) recently lent its financial muscle.
Commenting on its R310 000 borehole donation, SAMCT representative, Mr Gaff Osman, said: “The
need for continuous water supply to an institution caring for infants is absolutely critical. Ongoing
water supply must be regarded as being of paramount importance where the lives of babies are
concerned.”
He added: “The Upper Highway Baby Home, established in 2018, is performing a vital service and
should in no way be compromised because of poor and unreliable water provision in the area. It was
evident that the best outcome would be to become water self-sufficient, thus ensuring that its
services would be free of interruption. In addition, and given that many of its beneficiaries still have
no running water atier the floods or are not yet serviced, borehole water would play a big role in
filling the gap in such basic services.”
The organisation works predominantly in the Outer West region, but also receives abandoned babies
from throughout the Greater Durban area. It is dedicated to making a significant contribution
towards reducing the shocking extent of baby abandonment in this country, currently estimated to
be 30 000 babies per annum, of which only 10% survive.
This facility is geared to providing a solid foundation for children in their first 1 000 days, as part of
Early Childhood Development.
Mr Gary Stanton, Co-founder of the Upper Highway Baby Home, said: “We have admired the SAMCT
for some time for the work they do in helping the most vulnerable. We approached them last year
with our water issue and were absolutely delighted when they offered to install a borehole. We now
have a constant supply of potable water, a critical success factor for the work we perform in our
local communities. We are truly grateful to SAMCT.”
The advent of the borehole installation now puts an end to the home’s reliance on eThekwini Water,
which has proved particularly undependable and erratic in its head-office area and a number of the
areas in which it operates, so bringing much-needed stability to baby-care.
In addition to caring for the babies passing through the home, staff have also recognised that the
rate of baby abandonment was so high that it needed to extend its intervention into local
communities so as to beter understand the problem and to provide direct support, so helping to
reduce the high incidence of baby abandonments.
It now operates an outreach programme, with more than 500 babies and young mothers registered,
providing food, water, sanitary products, clothing, toys and blankets, amongst other critical items, as
well as guidance to young vulnerable mothers, encouraging them to not drop out of school.
“The critical nature of the home’s work with babies and young mothers prompted the SAMCT’s
financial assistance, given that water may justly be regarded as the very necessary foundation for the
growth and development of the infants in its care; infants already disadvantaged by circumstance,”
Mr Osman said.
The SAMCT was created in 2008, the result of a partnership between Old Mutual Unit Trusts and Al
Baraka Bank, for the creation, marketing and distribution of a suite of Shariah Funds. The
organisation provides funding, services and other resources for the improvement of the lives of the
vulnerable, deprived and disadvantaged. It has been singularly successful in delivering sizeable
assistance solutions throughout South Africa – irrespective of race or religion – and continues to work
to support needy organisations in the fields of healthcare, social development, poverty alleviation
and education.
He added: “We believe the Upper Highway Baby Home will be able to make great strides in
maintaining and expanding its most laudable baby-care activities into the future, safe in the
knowledge that it will never again have to worry about water.”