On shaky ground02/06/2009 09:23 - (SA) On shaky ground
Lumka Oliphant
THE former department of housing has for the past 10 years failed to comply with a vital component in the building process: enrolling housing projects with the National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC).
This failure means the first vital construction step was omitted: the houses were built on ground that was not tested by engineers to ensure its suitability for construction.
Legislation requires that the construction of houses be enrolled with the NHBRC before building even begins.
Manson Chirwa, a Johannesburg engineer, says the involvement of the NHBRC is a process instituted to confirm the foundation designs and dolomitic conditions are sound for the construction of houses to ensure they do not later crack.
City Press, however, has discovered that more than 50% of government housing projects undertaken in the country during the past 10 years have not been registered with the housing regulatory body.
The NHBRC has resorted to interdicting the former department of housing, now known as the department of human settlements, to force it to comply with registration.
Because of this, the government has for the first time in 10 years provided the NHBRC with a list of projects – a combined total of 64 987 individual houses.
However, the list contains only projects undertaken between April last year and April this year, and excludes the rest of the past decade. From this one-year list, the NHBRC has already rejected 14 332 houses in various provinces, because the government has not submitted the required enrolment documents for the projects.
The NHBRC has rejected all 8 000 houses listed in Johannesburg’s Cosmo City, a large government semi-bonded housing project, because the proper enrolment procedures were not followed.
Cosmo City had the largest number of houses rejected among the countrywide housing projects.
In April, City Press reported how residents in Cosmo City complained of numerous structural defects in their homes.
Five provinces – Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal, Free State, Mpumalanga and Northern Cape – have not enrolled any projects with the body for the 2008/09 period.
Kgomotso Mahlobo, chief operating officer of the NHBRC, says the Housing Consumers Measures Protection Act specified that contractors have to remedy structural defects at their own cost within five years of the completion of houses.
Since December 1999, all home builders are required to enrol every home with the regulatory body – irrespective of selling price – 15 days before construction commences.
Mahlobo said the problem of lack of enrolment stemmed from the fact that before 1999 only private building projects had to be enrolled. After that government also had to comply.
She said they were now working with provincial governments to make sure “they do not just chase numbers but deliver quality homes”.
Mahlobo would not be drawn into the consequences of what would happen if the courts ordered any projects to be halted because of non-compliance.
‘‘We cannot and should not subpoena government,” she said.
Kaba Kabagambe, human settlement’s deputy director-general for service delivery and support, admits they had failed to work closely with the NHBRC. He said this was as a result of huge challenges of capacity countrywide. “Indeed there are problems with project enrolment because of a lack of technical expertise in the housing chain,” said Kabagambe. In the Eastern Cape, for example, he said there were not enough engineers or even town planners to work on projects.
Kabagambe said they had started to work closely with provincial governments and the NHBRC, and it was important that the mistakes of the past 10 years were not repeated.
He said he understood their non-compliance with the NHBRC could lead to the deregistration of contractors, but said they should rest assured that the matter was being dealt with.
City Press tried to get comment from the current defence and former housing minister, Lindiwe Sisulu, on this debacle yesterday, but a bodyguard said media and the public were not entitled to speak directly to the minister.
As the department deals with the NHBRC court challenge, it faces problems in places like KwaZulu-Natal and Cape Town, where people have resorted to violence over access to proper houses.
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