Housing woes: City wants time

THE City of Tshwane has appealed to the steering committee in Mahube to give it more time to deal with the housing woes that have caused tremendous strain between formal and informal homeowners in extensions 1 and 17.

This comes in the wake of ongoing clashes between “bond homeowners” and Mountain View informal settlement residents, who have been at each other’s throats for more than a year.

Homeowners complain that their utility bills have spiralled out of control because of the illegal connections by residents of the informal settlement.

Housing and Human Settlements MMC, Mandla Nkomo, said the city was fully committed to finding a permanent solution to the problem by relocating the residents of Mountain View informal settlement to a more formal area.

However, the city was obliged to find alternative accommodation for them before the relocation.

He said the department was still dealing with the procurement processes for alternative land.

“We are faced with a huge challenge in land shortage for settlement, and appeal to the steering committee to give us time to properly address the issue within the current constraints,” said Nkomo.

He said that once the land procurement was finalised, the department would embark on a relocation action plan. Nkomo said “shack-marking” had been carried out in Mountain View to determine the extent of the problem.

He said once the relocation took place, the area would be secured to prevent further land invasions.

Violent protests early this year resulted in houses being torched, allegedly by informal settlers.

At the time, residents rejected mayor Solly Msimanga’s explanation as to why he could not remove the squatters.

“My hands are tied, I can’t remove the 4 000 squatters due to the Prevention of Illegal Occupation Act, but I have come up with workable solutions,” he said.

Before that Msimanga had proposed to build a “big wall” to separate the homeowners and the illegal squatters, in a bid to curb the violence.

The suggestion of the wall came after a court interdict to remove the illegal squatters was not granted. Instead, the court only ordered the squatters to refrain from damaging houses and intimidating their neighbours.

We are faced with a huge challenge in land shortage