Durban – At least 1.6 million houses will built by 2019, Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said on Thursday.
Speaking at the annual Govan Mbeki Awards in Durban, Sisulu said that 4.3 million houses had been built since 1994.
“I think we can do it. We will have built six million houses by 2019,” she said.
Sisulu said that building of housed to address the country’s housing shortage peaked in 2007 when 280,000 houses were built.
It then dropped off, but the pace has since picked up.
She said department heads had taken “the threat of resignations very seriously”. She said the country had achieved many milestones over the past year, but that there was much that needed to achieve.
She said the construction industry could help to drive the economy.
“We have to find a way to eradicate informal settlements,” she said.
Despite the challenges she said South Africa was a leader when it came to the delivery of housing for its people.
African News Agency