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15 December 2008

Johannesburg: "Today we have build 2,7 million houses, providing shelter to well over 13 million people, we are proud to say that by the end of the financial year, which is March 2009, we would have build 2,8 million houses, providing homes to close to 15 million people. What we are most proud of is that from 2004 we have built 1,2 million houses. In other words, in just fours years we have provided shelter to more than five million people."

The Minister said that there is a growing number of younger people receiving houses and that might mean "we have passed a phase in which those who are over 70 years are still waiting for houses."

"If there is an elder who is above 70 years, who is still waiting for a house, please contact our call centre (0800 146 873) and we will ensure that you have a house the soonest."

Sisulu said that all qualifying 10 000 military veterans would received government subsidised houses by December 2009. Government has embarked on a programme aimed at providing a variety of services to military veterans.

The Minister said she was happy with the partnership forged by the Department over the years. This includes the private sector, non-governmental organisations as well as the banks. Sisulu said the partnerships had resulted in an accelerated delivery of housing.

She added that central to the implementation of the Breaking New Ground housing policy is the Social Contract for Housing Delivery signed in 2005 at the National Housing Indaba in Cape Town. From this contract we have seen some of the greatest projects ever seen in this country.

The banking sector contribution

The banks have reported to have spent close to R40 billion from 2005 of the committed R42 billion in the Financial Sector Charter. "What are important are the lessons that we have learnt in projects like Cosmo City, Olivenboutboshof and others initiated projects by the banks and ourselves, she said.

The Mining Sector contribution

The Minister acknowledged the contribution of the Chamber of Mines in coordinating their members to support the housing programme. "We are very pleased that today all Mines have a housing programme, they are upgrading hostels and also working with banks to provide affordable housing, as Government we are also partnering with them to fast track housing delivery, in our partnerships we provide subsidy as they provide serviced land," she said.

Project implementation and budget control

By end of March 2009, Government would have spent close to 100% of its budget. MINMEC (Committee of Minister and MECs) agreed that those provinces that are having challenges in implementing some of their identified projects will be assisted and where they fail to spend, funds would be transferred to other provinces.

A team has been put together to monitor and support implementation of projects; in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape there is a team that is supporting the implementation of all priority projects. Their responsibility is to develop systems for fast tracked quality housing delivery.

Measures to combat fraud and corruption

Corruption in housing manifest itself in two or three ways, is either the developer will corrupt an official to approve less quality workmanship and the use of less quality material and thus putting the lives of the beneficiaries at risk and wasting government money. And also those officials of our government who fraudulently award people who do not qualify houses, and thus living many poor people who qualify in the cold. We are in the process of taking close to 30 000 government officials through a legal and prosecution process to recover the subsidy money they obtain fraudulently.

More than 600 of them have been convicted and punished. We will not rest until all of them are dealt with both by the courts and also by the government as an employer. Also of equal criminality is the developers who runaway from projects, developers who bribe government officials to authorise shoddy work, their time is over. You will know that we have started taking some of them to court. After the court process we will blacklist them and ensure that they never build a single house in this country.

The Minister added that there is still a lot of work to be done, and the challenges are huge, among them the quality must continue to improve, fraud and corruption in the housing chain must be defeated and housing must be fast tracked in order to eradicate informal settlements. "We still have a lot of challenges, but we are confident that the systems we have laid and the programmes we are implementing will assist us to achieve our dream of a South Africa free of slums" Minister Sisulu said.

Enquiries:
Ndivhuwo Mabaya
Cell: 083 645 7838

Issued by: Department of Housing
15 December 2008