Crackdown on shoddy RDP houses

The appointment of two new contractors to repair incomplete RDP houses in Nkomazi, Mpumalanga, is unjustifiable, the Democratic Alliance said. Picture: Itumeleng English

The appointment of two new contractors to repair incomplete RDP houses in Nkomazi, Mpumalanga, is unjustifiable, the Democratic Alliance said. Picture: Itumeleng English

Published May 28, 2015

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Johannesburg -

Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu is cracking down on companies responsible for building shoddy houses by demanding they rebuild them.

Sisulu, who spoke to Independent Media at her office in Cape Town this week, said the government spent billions of rand a year to fix poorly built houses.

But the time had come for the government to stop this and get the contractors involved to rebuild the shoddy houses.

Sisulu said poorly built houses cost the government R2 billion a year and it wanted to put a stop to this.

She said most of the contractors responsible needed to be tracked down and brought back to rebuild the houses.

While there had been a rectification programme in the past, the government would no longer fix badly built houses from its own coffers.

The government had spent billions of rand in the past few years fixing shoddy houses, particularly in the Free State, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

Sisulu added that the government would fast-track the delivery of houses in the next five years by cutting red tape and centralising the waiting list for thousands of beneficiaries.

She said the 1.5 million housing target by 2019 was attainable.

Sisulu said the slow pace in the delivery of houses in the past four years had been due to a number of factors, including high building costs.

The government would no longer build houses in small projects, but rather on a big scale in order to economise.

“Out of these mega projects we are hoping to have cross-subsidisation. We are hoping the Department of Public Works will donate land because land is expensive. We have calculated that building 1.5 million houses is, in fact, possible,” she said.

They were hoping that in every human settlement there will be a clinic, school and police station.

These were essential services communities needed in their new housing environment.

Sisulu said the time to build shoddy houses was over, and she believed that taking away the powers from local government and putting people on a central database would fast-track delivery of houses.

The minister also cautioned that officials at local level had been interfering with the waiting list.

Centralising it would eliminate any form of corruption, including people jumping the queue.

She added that the policy had intended to give houses to people over the age of 60.

Political Bureau

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