Wednesday, November 25, 2009

WC aims to update housing data, admits problems

The Provincial Department of Local Government and Housing on Tuesday announced that they were embarking on a R2.5 million exercise to update their housing demand database.

Housing MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela said the province’s housing backlog was estimated at about 450 000, but there was a lack of information around people’s income levels, their access to basic services, whether they lived in an informal settlement, backyard or were overcrowded in a formal structure.

He said there was also a lack of information regarding disabled people who required housing.

He said the housing demand data support programme would essentially support support municipalities outside of the Cape Town Metropole and provide accurate and up-to-date information which would allow for “much better provincial level planning and policy making”.

The provision of such data would greatly assist municipalities in selecting beneficiaries for housing projects and would assist with forward planning and the formulation of strategy and policy.

“The quality of this information has been a concern for all three spheres of government for a number of years.”

He said “unhappiness” which surrounded some housing projects was a result of lack of communication between government and the beneficiary community and so part of the database exercise was to create a transparent housing list which everyone could have access to.

He said they intended to have a supplier in place by mid-December to “undertake this important work”.

The project would consist of two phases, the first of which would entail assessing the current data collection and management systems, while the second phase would be to design a strategy to support municipalities to improve their data collection and recording systems.

Department of Local Government and Housing Chief Director for Planning and Development Jacqui Samson said: “The first phase is estimated to cost around 2.5 million.” Samson said it was planned to be up and running within ten months. - West Cape News

No comments: