Cape Town - The government has so far spent R927-million on repairing or rebuilding sub-standard government houses in this financial year, Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale said on Wednesday.
The figure includes the cost of demolishing and rebuilding 1 144 houses in six provinces, half of them in Mpumalanga, Sexwale said in reply to a Parliamentary question by the Democratic Alliance.
In the Eastern Cape, 220 units were bulldozed and rebuilt.
Sexwale said that province spent a total of R76.25-million fixing 1 463 faulty state houses out of a target of 2 192.
The Northern Cape spent R6.8-million on repairing 129 houses and R5.7-million on demolishing and rebuilding 69 houses.
The minister had set aside R1.3-million of human settlement's budget of roughly R16-billion for repairs to poor quality government housing.
His special advisor Chris Vick said this was in line with a commitment to ensure that government houses were “of an acceptable quality”.
“We are optimistic that improvements to the procurement and quality control systems will reduce the need for rectification going forward,” he said.
Vick added that the majority of houses being repaired were either built before the National Home Builders' Registration Council (NHBRC) was fully operational and therefore in a position to ensure proper quality control, or dated from a time when houses built under the People's Housing Process were not covered by the NHBRC's quality-control process. - Sapa