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There were provincial mechanisms in place to deal with the current high rainfall in the Northern and Eastern provinces, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal for relief work not to be taken over by the Command Centre for Flood Relief and Emergency Reconstruction, Deputy Home Affairs Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said on Tuesday.

Sisulu, under whom the command centre falls, was addressing a management meeting at the centre in Pretoria.

"The disaster management committees of the provinces are able to deal with these floods and they are dealing with them.

"What we are checking is how far our foundations have stood the test of the rains. These recent rains are outside of our mandate and are localised. "The local Disaster Management Committees are coping. Unlike in the previous floods that were of such a nature that they were on a national scale requiring national intervention," Sisulu said.

She said the Command Centre had been set up specifically to deal with the huge natural disaster early this year and, Sisulu said, she hoped it would be able to provide a framework to deal with similar situations in the future.

The Command Centre CEO Colin Matjila would be taking a tour this week of the areas hit by the recent heavy rains to look at the damage and to see how the disaster management committees were coping.

"What we will be checking for is to see if the restoration that we have put in place has been affected by the recent rain.

"Floods will continue to happen. Our job was not to stop the floods but the floods we had last year were of such a nature that they had an impact on our economy and our ability to operate maximally as a country," Sisulu said.

Issued by The Command Centre, 12 December 2000