Johannesburg – Gauteng Human Settlements MEC Lebogang Maile has rebuked some communities in the province, accusing them of aiding criminal activities relating to the illegal acquisition of land and RDP houses.
On Monday, Maile gave an update on the housing crisis in the province, and the measures taken by his department to ensure all hands were on deck to reduce the housing backlog, which is at around one million.
Maile said the corruption, which involved wrongly allocating houses to people and sidelining those who had applied for them from as early as the 1990s, was a big problem.
“Some of the people who are occupying these houses … have bought these houses from criminal networks that are working with some of our people internally and externally. We have said communities must help us with information. Sometimes they don’t; they actually are the ones who are participating in these schemes.”
Maile said the provincial government would on Wednesday issue serviced stands to residents as part of the Rapid Land Release Programme (RLRP) aimed at giving pieces of land to residents who are prepared to build their own houses.
“We are releasing 10 000 stands, and we are releasing the policy so that it will be clear for anybody who wants to get land from the government, how they will get that land,” he said.
The provincial government had spent R351 million on the first phase of the RLRP, with around R290m earmarked for the purchase of around 2 300 serviced stands in the Dunnotta, Ngkull and Daggafontein areas.
Maile said the provincial administration would not tolerate the invasion and illegal occupation of land and housing units by residents, and 1 500 community patrollers had been appointed to monitor land invasions.
The Star