Pretoria - Thousands of unclaimed title deeds continue to gather dust in the Housing and Human Settlements Department in the City of Tshwane.
Most of them belong to people who acquired properties from as far back as 1994 and beyond.
MMC Mpho Mehlape-Zimu said the uncollected title deeds was one of the things which suggested to her that something may be amiss in the department.
“The fact that there were uncollected title deeds as old as prior to 1994 showed that there was something that needed to be rectified in the system,” she said.
“That is one of the things that I am going to prioritise. We should try to figure out what is happening with the title deeds. In the event the beneficiaries are deceased, we should try to locate their dependants and deliver the title deeds to them,” she said.
Last year, the department reported that it was finding it difficult to trace beneficiaries of at least 9 000 title deeds.
The last time the City handed over titled deeds was in March this year, when at least 1 000 beneficiaries received theirs in New Eersterust near Hammanskraal.
Mehlape-Zimu said she was aware that one of the problems facing the human settlements department was corruption.
“One thing I noticed about human settlements, and not only in Tshwane, is that there is a lot of corruption that is happening. Not within the department itself but somewhere outside. For example, I got a call from Mamelodi, ward 97, where they were saying they have got stands that were supposed to be delivered to them but somebody is charging them R30 000."
Another issue to be addressed was related to people illegally selling the government-built houses.
“That is the issue I won’t be able to solve within 11 months."
Pretoria News