InternAfrica agrees with The Democratic Alliance who has rejected as false Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu's claim that the government has built nearly 100,000 houses for more than 400,000 people in the Western Cape over the past three years.
But the national Housing Ministry insists that Sisulu's figures are correct and questions the City of Cape Town's spending practices.
Last week the Cape Times reported that Sisulu had provided the figures, as well as some related to the cost of building houses, in response to a parliamentary question by Corne Mulder of the Freedom Front Plus.
Sisulu said:
She said:
"(Sisulu) needs to show that the figures she has produced are based on facts rather than electioneering," Steyn said.
"For each of the three financial years in question, the City of Cape Town received about 72% of the entire provincial housing budget, which it spent on providing 6,500 housing opportunities at a cost of R70,000 each in the previous financial year, and nearly 7,500 in 2006/07.
He said Sisulu's figures suggested that four times as many housing opportunities were being delivered "at a third of the cost" in areas of the province outside Cape Town.
"This is financially impossible. (Sisulu's) calculation ... assumes all funds are actually spent, which is not the case, given problems with lack of capacity, long delays in clearing land for building, (environmental impact assessment) processes and various other factors. The real number per year in the province is somewhere around 10,000 per annum, with most of this coming from the City of Cape Town."
Housing Ministry spokesperson Ndivhuwo Mabaya said the national subsidy for construction was R36,000 per unit in 2006, R38,000 in 2007, R43,000 in 2008 and R58,000 in 2009.
"That's what's approved by the minister ... so where did (the city) get that money (R70,000)?" Mabaya said.
Mabaya said the subsidy covered construction only and excluded the cost of the land on which houses were built and services.
Steyn also questioned Sisulu's assertion that people waited, on average, two years for a house, saying there were about 400,000 people on the City of Cape Town's waiting list alone, and with "a real rate of provincial delivery of around 10,000 housing opportunities per year, this would mean a total period of 40 years to settle all requests" assuming the list did not grow at all.
Mabaya said Sisulu's figure of two years referred to the time it took from the approval of a project to when a person moved into a unit in the project area.
- Cape Times
But the national Housing Ministry insists that Sisulu's figures are correct and questions the City of Cape Town's spending practices.
Last week the Cape Times reported that Sisulu had provided the figures, as well as some related to the cost of building houses, in response to a parliamentary question by Corne Mulder of the Freedom Front Plus.
Sisulu said:
- 34,585 housing units were built in the 2006/07 financial year,
- 34 157 in the 2007/08 financial year and that
- 34 355 were projected for completion in the 2008/09 financial year.
She said:
R787-million was spent on construction in 2006/07,The DA's spokesperson on housing, Butch Steyn, said that the figures supplied by Sisulu were "misleading".
R1,1-billion the following year and a total of
R1,3bn would have been spent on building houses in the Western Cape when the 2008/09 financial year ends.
"(Sisulu) needs to show that the figures she has produced are based on facts rather than electioneering," Steyn said.
"For each of the three financial years in question, the City of Cape Town received about 72% of the entire provincial housing budget, which it spent on providing 6,500 housing opportunities at a cost of R70,000 each in the previous financial year, and nearly 7,500 in 2006/07.
He said Sisulu's figures suggested that four times as many housing opportunities were being delivered "at a third of the cost" in areas of the province outside Cape Town.
"This is financially impossible. (Sisulu's) calculation ... assumes all funds are actually spent, which is not the case, given problems with lack of capacity, long delays in clearing land for building, (environmental impact assessment) processes and various other factors. The real number per year in the province is somewhere around 10,000 per annum, with most of this coming from the City of Cape Town."
Housing Ministry spokesperson Ndivhuwo Mabaya said the national subsidy for construction was R36,000 per unit in 2006, R38,000 in 2007, R43,000 in 2008 and R58,000 in 2009.
"That's what's approved by the minister ... so where did (the city) get that money (R70,000)?" Mabaya said.
Mabaya said the subsidy covered construction only and excluded the cost of the land on which houses were built and services.
Steyn also questioned Sisulu's assertion that people waited, on average, two years for a house, saying there were about 400,000 people on the City of Cape Town's waiting list alone, and with "a real rate of provincial delivery of around 10,000 housing opportunities per year, this would mean a total period of 40 years to settle all requests" assuming the list did not grow at all.
Mabaya said Sisulu's figure of two years referred to the time it took from the approval of a project to when a person moved into a unit in the project area.
- Cape Times
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