Minister lays down law on housing delivery

MINISTER of Human Settlements Lindiwe Sisulu has thrown down the gauntlet.

Officials and contractors have been urged to build more houses.

Sisulu was speaking at the Govan Mbeki Awards at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. The awards honour municipalities and provinces for delivering housing to communities.

Delivery statistics paint a sobering picture. Over the past six years it has declined, but would be ramped up over the next year, she promised.

“Everyone in my institutions will sign a pledge to recommit themselves to work harder. A war room has been established and one of its roles is to track all human settlement projects.

“The heads of department will be accountable, not only to their respective MECs, but also to all MECs as a collective. The MECs, deputy minister (Zou Kota-Fredericks) and myself will work as a collective, because it is only when we work as a collective that we will achieve our goals.”

If metros and provinces are not meeting their goals, their budgets will be redirected to metros and provinces who are delivering. Sisulu said budget roll-overs would not be allowed.

She warned officials, and those involved in building houses, “if they don’t have a burning passion to help poor people out of poverty, if they don’t have a love for their job, then they are in the wrong job. Because nothing less than passion works in this environment”, Sisulu said.

Officials and contractors have to change their attitudes, she added, and everyone has to triple their efforts and produce more houses than promised and take millions of South Africans out of poverty.

She promised military veterans that 5 000 houses would be completed for them by March. There will be a Youth Brigade working on every major project.

“We will start with the training of 200 youths in the Western Cape to work on the N2 Gateway Project and in the Eastern Cape as part of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro’s housing projects,” Sisulu said.

Sisulu has also appointed a national rapid response task team to interact with communities in order to lessen any tension that may arise when a Human Settlements project is under way.

Contractors will be expected to deliver good quality houses, and on time. They will be penalised for missing deadlines.

At the end of next month, Sisulu will also announce the details of 77 catalytic human settlement projects.

In her impassioned speech, she said, providing housing was a key way of helping people out of poverty.

“The asset value of a house can take the poorest of us out of destitution. This country boasts a residential property value of R3 trillion.

“We are ranked number one in the world and our people, for whom we fought, our people who had for years been driven off their land, the victims of forced removals, evictions and influx control, own a dismally low share of this huge economy,” she said.