Daily Dispatch Online
2009/07/30
BHISHO is spending R360 million to fix nearly 20 000 broken homes in the province while the poor live in flimsy cardboard units and ghost towns emerge from the ruins of disastrous housing projects.
In some areas of the province communities have deserted formal housing settlements because the homes were so poorly built they cannot live in them any longer.
The number of homes having to be repaired is more than the total number of 19662 houses delivered in the 2006/2007 financial year.
While the provincial government tries to rein in its backlog of 800 000 RDP homes, a two-month investigation by the Dispatch has revealed how:
Homes were built in areas which people have long since left;
One project in Seymour became State-sponsored “holiday homes” for people who live in other cities and only return in December;
Residents in Burgersdorp were moved into cardboard houses when their RDP homes began falling to the ground, and were then asked to clean up the mess themselves;
One project of 600 homes in Tarkastad has been standing empty, while a waiting list to house people continues to grow;
Depopulation and inferior construction in places like Venterstad has led to the emergence of ghost towns; and
A community near Bhisho is still waiting after five years for electricity and water because the government refuses to provide the services until it has finished the housing project it started eight years ago.
The biggest victims in the province’s housing fiasco are among the most vulnerable in the population.
Like two pensioners, Loki Makeleni and Ngqukuse Nonxaza, who have been living in a flimsy cardboard home for seven months while their shoddy RDP house in Burgersdorp is repaired.
“The government doesn’t care about people who live here. We’re going to die in these houses. I’m just waiting for my coffin right now,” said the elderly Makeleni.
To rub salt into their wounds, the local Gariep Municipality wanted the same residents to clear the tons of rubble lining the streets – for free.
The problems in Burgersdorp are far from unique – in fact, all but one of eight housing projects visited by the Dispatch are being rebuilt .
In many cases inexperienced contractors have been blamed for the problems .
Two weeks ago Housing MEC Nombulelo Mabandla vowed to blacklist incompetent builders and recover funds from them where necessary.
But she said her department would never forsake emerging contractors and would do all they could to mentor them in future.
“ That is why we have developed a training programme for them, called the Emerging Contractors Development Programme,” she said.
Seymour and Venterstad are two examples where RDP homes have been deserted or remain unoccupied because there are no local jobs, or poor workmanship has made the buildings unsafe.
Yet the reverse has happened in Tarkastad, where more than 600 residents are on a waiting list to occupy low- cost homes in a nearby project that is standing empty.
Derek Luyt from the Public Service Accountability Monitor in Grahamstown said the department’s Service Delivery Charter and Service Delivery Plans for 2009 and 2010 highlight its pitfalls.
“Staff shortages and lack of sufficient skills have severely hampered the department in the past, and it will not be able to deliver sufficient houses of adequate quality unless it solves its human resources problems,” Luyt said.
Democratic Alliance spokesperson Pine Pienaar said the huge backlog, lack of monitoring and under-spending in the department was a direct result of the department’s inefficiency to fill critical posts in technical and finance departments. - By GCINA NTSALUBA. Pictures: THEO JEPTHA
2009/07/30
BHISHO is spending R360 million to fix nearly 20 000 broken homes in the province while the poor live in flimsy cardboard units and ghost towns emerge from the ruins of disastrous housing projects.
In some areas of the province communities have deserted formal housing settlements because the homes were so poorly built they cannot live in them any longer.
The number of homes having to be repaired is more than the total number of 19662 houses delivered in the 2006/2007 financial year.
While the provincial government tries to rein in its backlog of 800 000 RDP homes, a two-month investigation by the Dispatch has revealed how:
Homes were built in areas which people have long since left;
One project in Seymour became State-sponsored “holiday homes” for people who live in other cities and only return in December;
Residents in Burgersdorp were moved into cardboard houses when their RDP homes began falling to the ground, and were then asked to clean up the mess themselves;
One project of 600 homes in Tarkastad has been standing empty, while a waiting list to house people continues to grow;
Depopulation and inferior construction in places like Venterstad has led to the emergence of ghost towns; and
A community near Bhisho is still waiting after five years for electricity and water because the government refuses to provide the services until it has finished the housing project it started eight years ago.
The biggest victims in the province’s housing fiasco are among the most vulnerable in the population.
Like two pensioners, Loki Makeleni and Ngqukuse Nonxaza, who have been living in a flimsy cardboard home for seven months while their shoddy RDP house in Burgersdorp is repaired.
“The government doesn’t care about people who live here. We’re going to die in these houses. I’m just waiting for my coffin right now,” said the elderly Makeleni.
To rub salt into their wounds, the local Gariep Municipality wanted the same residents to clear the tons of rubble lining the streets – for free.
The problems in Burgersdorp are far from unique – in fact, all but one of eight housing projects visited by the Dispatch are being rebuilt .
In many cases inexperienced contractors have been blamed for the problems .
Two weeks ago Housing MEC Nombulelo Mabandla vowed to blacklist incompetent builders and recover funds from them where necessary.
But she said her department would never forsake emerging contractors and would do all they could to mentor them in future.
“ That is why we have developed a training programme for them, called the Emerging Contractors Development Programme,” she said.
Seymour and Venterstad are two examples where RDP homes have been deserted or remain unoccupied because there are no local jobs, or poor workmanship has made the buildings unsafe.
Yet the reverse has happened in Tarkastad, where more than 600 residents are on a waiting list to occupy low- cost homes in a nearby project that is standing empty.
Derek Luyt from the Public Service Accountability Monitor in Grahamstown said the department’s Service Delivery Charter and Service Delivery Plans for 2009 and 2010 highlight its pitfalls.
“Staff shortages and lack of sufficient skills have severely hampered the department in the past, and it will not be able to deliver sufficient houses of adequate quality unless it solves its human resources problems,” Luyt said.
Democratic Alliance spokesperson Pine Pienaar said the huge backlog, lack of monitoring and under-spending in the department was a direct result of the department’s inefficiency to fill critical posts in technical and finance departments. - By GCINA NTSALUBA. Pictures: THEO JEPTHA
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