North West municipalities need to create stringent by-laws to prevent the “mushrooming” of informal settlements, Human Settlements MEC Desbo Mohono said on Saturday.
“I would like to urge all local municipalities, to come up with rigid by-laws that would ensure that we do not see another informal settlement mushrooming in our land,” Mohono said in a statement
“We cannot win this battle if we continue to be held to ransom by our people, who continue to occupy land illegally and continue to add numbers to the ever emerging informal settlements.”
Mohono made the appeal during the handing over of the informal settlements improvement plan report on Friday in Rustenburg, following a five year investigation.
She said that the investigation showed that the total number of shacks in informal settlements in the province was estimated at over 77600 in 140 informal settlements. -Sapa