The Western Cape housing department has recruited 10 Cuban senior engineers and architects to assist in housing projects, because local specialists are too expensive.
This is part of the department's bid to deliver houses faster - it has has already built more than 4 000 houses in the past six months, better than it did over the same period last year.
Housing and Local Government MEC Marius Fransman said on Tuesday: "Over the same period last year, the department spent R84-million compared to the R165m this year. The tide has turned on the negative housing delivery process. This has been an extraordinary task."
"This shows that we were able to double our expenditure."
Fransman said the 10 full-time Cuban specialists in social housing would work on site with beneficiaries involved in the People's Housing Process projects, in which they built their own homes with the subsidies received from the government.
Said Fransman: "I challenge local engineers and architects to match what the Cubans are going to do in our province. The Cubans will also train young people in building housing for the poor. We are not able to recruit our own professionals because they are too costly."
He said the speedy delivery of housing over the past few months was due to his department's review of the R141m under-expenditure of the last financial year's budget and the backlog of 320 000 houses.
Lack of discipline within the department's administration and a lack of management and implementation tools had also been tackled, said Fransman.
In addition to sacking the previous head of department earlier this year, Fransman last week suspended a manager in the housing department amid allegations of corruption regarding property transfers and awarding of tenders.
"We sorted out our institutional problems and were able to deal with the R141-million rollover funds."
Fransman said he had embarked on a strategy that would ensure that the allocated budget of R446-million would be spent, in addition to the R141-million brought forward from the last financial year.
Fransman's report card over the past six months includes:
- Building 4 045 houses.
- Providing bulk infrastructure to 10 813 sites in order to create housing opportunities.
- Employing additional project managers.
- Unblocking 15 of the 29 blocked housing projects, leading to 2 105 family units being created.
- 95 percent of municipalities having housing projects approved and implemented.
The N2 Housing Strategy, which will be implemented next year, will accommodate 12 000 families in decent housing units.
The District Six project is also included in this plan and will also see an additional 4 000 families getting houses through government subsidies.
The Malaysian government had also committed itself to building 5 000 housing units in the province, said Fransman.