Housing and infrastructure revolution upon us

All Gauteng regions, including Pretoria and Joburg, are set to get investments worth billions of rand to improve their infrastructure, including new housing developments across the province.

The province’s political head, David Makhura, said over the next two years, a greater sense of urgency will underly the government’s determination to build the economy and infrastructure will be the central and driving tenet of this sixth administration.

“All our infrastructure projects must be delivered on time and at cost. The delivery of infrastructure requires a war room approach which will bring critical role players in one room to deal with efficiencies, delivery and create partnerships. Should any of the implementing agents fail to deliver on time and on budget, I will not hesitate to replace them with agencies that will deliver on time and on budget,” he said.

Progress made on rolling out housing and infrastructure in Gauteng:

• Since 2019, a total of 181 informal settlements have been upgraded.

• Makhura said his administration is committed to clearing the title deeds backlog by 2024, including issuing 44 339 new title deeds to beneficiaries of current housing projects.

• In addition to the 1 610 sites that we have allocated, we have also acquired an additional 12 000 stands to be allocated to beneficiaries.

• Construction of mega housing projects is under way in Dan Tloome in Carletonville and Elijah Barayi in the Westonaria, Riversand in Johannesburg, John Dube and Clayville in Ekurhuleni.

Tasneem Motara, Gauteng MEC for Infrastructure Development and Property Management, said Covid-19 set infrastructure rollout back but there is a determination to deliver on their mandate.

“One of the key issues the premier raised in his speech, which we completely agree with, is the fact that the Department of Infrastructure Development can’t be everything to everybody. What we want to be as a department is an infrastructure delivery department and that means we have to be able to tell client departments that there are some things that they must be able to do on their own, like maintenance, for example,” Motara said.