Plan to fast-track housing delivery
Sisulu to sign an agreement with Jordaan
HUMAN Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu will be in Nelson Mandela Bay today to sign an agreement with mayor Danny Jordaan that will outline her department’s plan to fast-track housing delivery in the metro.
The intervention by Sisulu’s department is part of a support package by the government to overhaul various departments in the municipality, particularly human settlements, infrastructure and engineering, economic development and the city treasury.
Housing contractors met officials and politicians from the municipality’s human settlements department as well as several senior government officials from the provincial and national Department of Human Settlements at a workshop yesterday.
The workshop, which is being held at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium and continues today, was to iron out challenges between the government and housing contractors about how tenders are allocated.
Earlier this month, small building contractors protested outside the ANC’s Florence Matomela House offices, where they raised concerns about Sisulu’s intervention, which they believe will harm their businesses.
They feel that taking away the function of housing delivery from the municipality means they will no longer benefit from contracts through a roster system they helped develop in 2011.
Yesterday, acting director-general Mbulelo Tshangana said the purpose of the intervention was to have a more integrated approach towards human settlements.
“Currently there are four developers who are agents for the department: it is the city, the province, the Housing Development Agency and Mzingisi Trust.
“We need a more integrated approach, not the current fragmented approach,” Tshangana said.
He said that during two of President Jacob Zuma’s visits to the city last year, the problems in the metro’s housing department were highlighted.
“It was clear there was an issue with how the roster system was working.”
Tshangana said there was no hostile takeover of the municipality’s human settlements department, but rather an attempt to ensure housing contractors delivered houses.
“Our intention is to ensure the metro is fully equipped to implement all our [housing] programmes.
“We want to integrate the fragmented approach to human settlements ... which is not helping us to eradicate the housing backlog.”
He said they wanted to help municipalities to eventually be able to get money directly from the government to build houses.
Deputy mayor Bicks Ndoni slammed corruption in the municipal housing department.
“It’s a known fact that in this city, if you want an RDP house, you can simply pay a bribe. It is scandalous to subject our people to this kind of behaviour. I’m not sure what the going rate is.
“There will be no point of putting in place good interventions without rooting out corruption. Let’s create a caring administration and distribute houses fairly and justly,” Ndoni said.
He slated the shoddy workmanship of some housing contractors which meant the government had to fork out millions of rands to fix badly built homes.
The metro’s head of human settlements, Lindile Petuna, said there had been a number of complaints about the roster system, which has about 400 housing contractors registered with the municipality.
“The 400 doesn’t constitute the number of SMMEs in the metro because when the tender is advertised, they don’t tender.
“It means that other contractors who are not registered with us must wait for the term to come to an end in 2016 before they can be part of it.”