Housing: Push Nala to deliver

I RESPOND to the letter “Adequate housing is a right” (POST, April 26-30), where the writer stated that I had informed the community of Reservoir Hills and Clare Estate that all residents of informal settlements in the ward would be relocated to Cornubia.

As the then ward councillor I had a meeting with a senior official in the housing department in 2009, where it was agreed the first batch of houses to be ready in Cornubia would be allocated to the shack dwellers in Reservoir Hills and Clare Estate.

I was asked to submit a list of the informal settlements in Ward 23 in the order of priority in which the residents should be moved to Cornubia.

The information I submitted regarding the prioritisation of the informal settlements was requested by the housing department. It was therefore incumbent on me to cascade this information to the community.

There was nothing to indicate that this blueprint would not be implemented, and it was definitely not meant to mislead the community in any way.

In the same year, former councillor Nigel Gumede, then chairman of eThekwini Council’s Human Settlements and Infrastructure Development Committee, had also created the expectation that all informal settlements in Ward 23 would be prioritised for relocation to Cornubia.

It is now up to DA ward councillor Xolani Nala to exert pressure on the housing department to relocate all the informal residents in Ward 23 to Cornubia, as had been planned almost a decade ago.

I would also like to appeal to those who chair the Reservoir Hills and Clare Estate ratepayers associations, NGOs, civic bodies and leaders from the informal settlements to put pressure on Councillor Nala and also play an oversight role to ensure the relocation goes according to plan. JAYRAJ BACHU

Clare Estate