Apartheid victims who testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are to receive subsidised houses as part of their reparations. The benefit will also be extended to former servicemen, war veterans and freedom fighters. These details and others came to light when Lindiwe Sisulu, the housing minister, delivered her budget vote in Parliament’s national assembly today.
The announcement was good news for World War two veterans, as well as for several MK and APLA soldiers. Their salaries in the national defence force didn’t take into account their housing needs, now along with apartheid victims, they’ll get preferential treatment.
Sisulu says: “I am certain it will go a long way to alleviate a great deal of indignity to the people we owe so much to.”
Shoddy work
Shoddy workmanship on RDP houses also got a mention. Earlier this year, a probe by the National Homes Builders Registration Council revealed that more than 2,000 low cost houses across the Cape Peninsula were riddled with structural defects. Often contractors disappear with millions of the public’s money.
It is hoped the soon to be established housing development agency will turn this around. Sisulu added: “Developers and contractors will therefore as part of a revised national housing code be required to sell to the state houses that they have built whose quality they can vouch for.”
It’s emerged that civil servants who fraudulently acquired RDP houses are giving them back. Some 30,000 are being prosecuted and more could be charged as the Special Investigating Unit is handling the probe. Corruption is seen as one of the serious impediments to the government’s commitment to housing delivery. - SABC
The announcement was good news for World War two veterans, as well as for several MK and APLA soldiers. Their salaries in the national defence force didn’t take into account their housing needs, now along with apartheid victims, they’ll get preferential treatment.
Sisulu says: “I am certain it will go a long way to alleviate a great deal of indignity to the people we owe so much to.”
Shoddy work
Shoddy workmanship on RDP houses also got a mention. Earlier this year, a probe by the National Homes Builders Registration Council revealed that more than 2,000 low cost houses across the Cape Peninsula were riddled with structural defects. Often contractors disappear with millions of the public’s money.
It is hoped the soon to be established housing development agency will turn this around. Sisulu added: “Developers and contractors will therefore as part of a revised national housing code be required to sell to the state houses that they have built whose quality they can vouch for.”
It’s emerged that civil servants who fraudulently acquired RDP houses are giving them back. Some 30,000 are being prosecuted and more could be charged as the Special Investigating Unit is handling the probe. Corruption is seen as one of the serious impediments to the government’s commitment to housing delivery. - SABC
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