Johannesburg - Gauteng’s three metropolitan councils in Joburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane have underspent by more than R3.4 billion on human settlement grants for the 2013/2014 financial year.
This was revealed by MEC for Human Settlements, Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Jacob Mamabolo when he appeared before the parliamentary portfolio committee on human settlements in Cape Town on Tuesday.
Mamabolo said the City of Joburg’s underspend was R1.3bn, Ekurhuleni R1.2bn and Tshwane’s was more than R800 million.
He gave the committee a detailed scheme to build houses in Gauteng, including plans to construct stormwater drains and the installation of electricity in new communities.
Mamabolo said some of the plans were under way in all the metros.
He said the City of Joburg was faced with procurement delays and lengthy land-acquisition planning processes, including that of capital, hence its underspend.
Mamabolo said the Ekurhuleni metro was faced with a review of its procurement processes and the introduction of new committees. That had slowed down the finalisation of bids.
He said the loss of technical capacity, including engineers and project managers, had played a part.
“An institutional review is in the process of being approved by the council,” Mamabolo said. “This will result in the augmentation of the organisational structure with appropriate levels of technical skills.”
He said the situation in Tshwane was better than the two other metros, but the metro was also faced with similar problems.
However, the DA’s national spokesman on human settlement Makashule Gana, who is a former City of Joburg councillor, was not buying it.
“The urban settlement development grant (USDG) is allocated to metros for the construction and improvement of human settlements.
“The metros outrageously spent some of the grant funding on capacity-building in the various departments and on line items such as the Joshco (Johannesburg Social Housing Company) project in Johannesburg, cemeteries in the Tshwane North region and, more shockingly, the Ekurhuleni metro police department.
“The committee also heard that the metros have three months to spend these funds allocated to them for the development of human settlements before the end of the financial year,” Gana said.
“This is ludicrous, given that the metros had almost a year to allocate these funds to projects, which they have not delivered on.”
He said many South Africans did not have the basic infrastructure that the provincial government had promised them.
Gana said Gauteng had underspent its budget by R48.8m to improve the conditions of mining towns.
“I will therefore be writing to the chairperson of the portfolio committee, Nocawe Mafu, to request that she summon the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements at the end of the financial year to deliver a comprehensive report on their ‘fiscal dumping’ on the remainder of the metros’ USDG funds.
“We cannot allow metros to underspend their allocated grant funding for the delivery of housing opportunities. The DA caucuses in each of these metros will be pursuing action in their respective councils,” Gana said.
The Star