Cape Town - Nelson Mandela metropolitan municipality deputy mayor Bicks Ndoni has slammed corruption within the housing sector as “scandalous”.
Speaking at the opening of the Developers Consultative Workshop on Monday, Ndoni said there was no point in putting in place good interventions when corruption was not rooted out in the allocation of housing within the Metro.
“It is well known fact in this city that you can get get an RDP house quickly by paying a bribe… It is simply scandalous that we are subjecting our people, who have trusted us and voted us into power, to this sort of behaviour,” he told the workshop attended by more than 200 contractor representatives in the city.
The workshop was organised by the Department of Human Settlements to assist the provincial department of human settlements and the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality to deal with contractor issues such as procurement and the quality of houses.
Referring to the fact that Cabinet had approved a package of support for the metro that would see the Housing Development Agency become an implementing agent to speed up housing delivery over the next three years, Ndoni said: “Let’s distribute houses fairly and justly, let’s give them the quality of houses that they deserve, lets create integrated communities with schools, parks and play grounds, let’s not subject them to the humiliation of having to pay bribes to get everything done.”
Human Settlements Acting Director-General Mbulelo Tshangana said the package of support approved by Cabinet in April was not an intervention in the affairs of the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality.
“That concept does not exist in our vocabulary. The reality is that we need a fully functioning human settlements in the Metro to make sure that there is integration and coordination between the three spheres of government in this Metro,” said Tshangana.
The Acting Director-General also informed the workshop that the R4,6 billion package of support announced by the Cabinet consisted of grants from the Department of Water and Sanitation, the Human Settlements Development Grant and the Urban Settlements Development Grant.
He said all stakeholders wanted to leave the workshop with a package of support for all contractors in the metro and to ensure there was common purpose in accelerating quality housing delivery.
The minister of human settlements Lindiwe Sisulu, Eastern Cape MEC for human settlements Helen Sauls-August and the Executive Mayor of Nelson Mandela Metro Danny Jordaan are due to sign a service delivery agreement aimed at fast tracking housing delivery in the municipality on Tuesday.
ANA