DA welcomes Bay council decision on land invasions
The DA caucus in Nelson Mandela Bay wholeheartedly welcomes the recent council decision to rescind the 2018 January council resolution on land invasions.
This delegated the authority to sanction evictions on both public and private property to the local authority and the strategy to respond to unlawful land invasions and to prevent the scourge of new invasions adopted by the majority parties.
The devastating effects that this illegal decision has had on the developmental trajectory of our city both spatially, socially and economically cannot be overstated.
As a party that upholds the constitution and is firmly committed to the rule of law, we would also like to commend our coalition partners for their unwavering support in restoring good governance and stability in our municipality — sanity has finally prevailed.
Our vision for human settlements is in line with the constitution of the republic and supports the interpretation of Section 26 of the Bill of Rights, which provides that everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing.
The proliferation of informal settlements in every open space of the city is conversely a clear indication that as the current government we need to accelerate the pace of housing delivery.
This is a right step in the right direction and will pave the way for the implementation of the high-level strategy on the provision of housing in our municipality as adopted in the 2017 housing indaba.
This, among other things, resolved to establish a project management unit within the human settlement housing delivery sub-directorate to enhance the capacity of the department to deliver more effectively on its mandate.
All people have the right to safe drinking water and sanitation and no responsible government can arbitrarily deny the provision of these basic services to communities.
As we implement this strategy we also need to come up with a review mechanism to measure the progress of the Housing Development Agency as the implementing agent in various projects across the metro.
Through the intergovernmental relations protocol, the minister of human settlements needs to take the current government into her confidence in terms of the recent public pronouncements made in various platforms on the future of state subsidised housing in the present policy framework.