Cape Town - The City has accused Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga of “deliberately” misleading Parliament about the Central Line relocation project after the municipality was blamed for relocation delays.
Chikunga told a standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) briefing that their work was frustrated on the Central Line.
“The Constitution gives powers to different spheres of government and they go with obligations to work with one another to carry out tasks.
In this case, housing is shared by the national Department of Human Settlements, provincial department and the City to ensure services are provided.
The issue around Project Bekela is an indication of the Passenger Rail Agency of SA frustration. Prasa is getting into mandates which are not theirs.”
She said that while Prasa’s mandate was to run the public rail system, it was now providing housing in the Central Line relocation, which was taking up resources from the agency.
Chikunga said the City had claimed not to have funds, and money had been allocated from the Human Settlements Department in March for the execution of the project.
“They have been holding this money from March and will do so until June when their financial year ends. This is frustrating, to say the least. The communities are willing to be relocated,” she said.
Another Prasa representative said: “While waiting for the City and HDA with regards to identifying the land, Prasa started implementing the project called Bekela.
If colleagues note when they visited the train station in the past months you would have not been able to even see any rail lines. We then worked with the communities and the integration in order to shift the shacks that were interfering, away from the infrastructure.
“As a temporal measure, we have identified land in terms of Prasa land by Stock (road) in Philippi and colleagues we note at the end of May we would have completed the 800 temporal move to Stock Road which would allow the contractors to start rebuilding that infrastructure. It’s one of the projects the late Loyiso Nkohla was assisting with. We are hoping one pocket will be cleared later this month so that we can join the line to Nyanga,” he said.
Mayco member for urban mobility, Rob Quintas, however, said Chikunga was uninformed about the Central Line relocation project, and at worst, “deliberately misinformed Parliament”.
“At my recent first meeting with the new minister, I got the impression that she was not well briefed by her department on the history and current situation regarding Prasa’s proposed relocation of those who are illegally occupying the Central Line. I am advising Minister Chikunga to first familiarise herself with the facts before speaking about this matter in public,” said Quintas.
He said HDA had the responsibility of identifying land parcels, and for undertaking the necessary development and land use applications to establish emergency housing to accommodate the unlawful occupants of Prasa’s Central Line.
“Regarding the R111m transferred without notice to the City on the last day of national government’s financial year on 30 March by National Human Settlements, these funds can only be used for human settlement purposes or informal settlement upgrading provided National Treasury grants the necessary approvals for the City to use these funds outside of the local government financial year ending 30 June,” he said.
“While the City does not wish to assume any nefarious intentions on the part of Human Settlements Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi, the receipt of the money on the last day of the government’s financial year has all the hallmarks of fiscal dumping - trying to get rid of unspent money at the last moment so that it doesn’t appear on the National Department’s books. Nevertheless, the City is happy to receive these funds and will spend it once the necessary Treasury approvals are secured,” he said.
Cape Times