Durban - Omi Nair is Chatsworth community activist who has worked tirelessly behind the scenes to bring about change in the environmental, social, educational, civic and health sectors.
Nair, 61, a grandmother of two and a bookkeeper has over the years grown a reputation for her tenacity in taking on municipal and governmental departments with her intentions solely for the upliftment of the community.
Nair is proud to be the founder member of the Parents Association of KwaZulu-Natal. She has been an activist for 33 years. One of her contributions to the Chatsworth community was her bold stance to prevent the invasion of land by squatters on several vacant plots in the Crossmoor area.
Her fearless and never say die approach as well as her vast contact base within the community and safety and security clusters of the police had prevented invasions on numerous occasions. She rallied the community to be on the lookout for land grabbers and provided them with the necessary toolkit and training on what to do when land invasions occur. The community were more united than ever during this period.
Her networking skills also led to the assistance of many shack dwellers and Chatsworth residents who received assistance after floods or shack fires in the Chatsworth area. She was also vocal on houses to be provided for shack dwellers at the Bottlebrush informal settlement and the recent push to expedite the construction work on a damaged portion of Higginson Highway Durban bound in July 2019.
Omi Nair
Nair is also keen on enlightening people to eat healthy foods. She created a Facebook group called Omi’s healthy eating the LCHF way (Low Carb Healthy Fats). She focuses on reversing lifestyle diseases.
Nair has won many accolades and received several recognitions most notably she was admitted to the prestigious Presidents Club of Junior Chamber of South Africa. She was also a finalist in the women in action woman of the year 2003.
In her early days and prodding her memory box Nair said she was the lone supporter of the school's Bakers Mini cricket team in the '90s. She said she would load the entire team of 8-year-old kids into her car and transport them to inter-school cricket matches.