Nine municipalities in the Western Cape have displayed “shocking results” when it comes to management of housing delivery, said the provincial MEC for human settlements, Bonginkosi Madikizela.
Briefing the media yesterday on his department’s R2.584bn budget for 2011-12, almost R400m more than the 2010-11 allocation, Madikizela said the problems arose from the housing demand databases managed by those municipalities.
Explaining the minister’s concerns, top bureaucrat in the provincial housing department, Mbulelo Tshangana, said many of the databases, where hopeful beneficiaries first register for a house, were flawed and incomplete, with some using manual documentation that was vulnerable to misuse.
Dedicated computer systems for input of data in municipalities, and which would give the ministry access to this information, were on the way across the province, he said.
He was reluctant to “name and shame” these municipalities, and insisted that the department was working on boosting capacity, although another housing official did not deny the Drakenstein municipality, with its long waiting list, was weak in this regard.
Clean and accurate databases with the names of people lined up for houses were vital to ensure transparency and fairness, so that certain beneficiaries with incomes of less than R3,500 a month, could not “jump the queue”, he said.
The other 15 non-metropolitan municipalities in the province were also getting ongoing assistance.
Madikizela earlier said that there was also “generally very poor planning” in municipalities, although for reasons not directly linked to poor database management, when it came to housing delivery.
As a result, money was taken away from three municipalities for use elsewhere.
“If you don’t use it you lose it,” he told reporters, in a blunt reference to the province’s struggling municipalities.
In his budget speech to the Western Cape legislature later yesterday, he said Kannaland, Prince Albert and Laingsburg had their entire allocations withdrawn in February, but that this was mostly due to constraints around the provision of bulk infrastructure such as sewerage.
Meanwhile, 20% of the province’s housing budget now goes directly to the city of Cape Town, which was taking greater responsibility for housing delivery in the metro.
This meant that the city got a R362m “slice” to fund the servicing of about 10,000 more sites in the metro area, said Madikizela.
This is according to changes introduced by the national Department of Human Settlements and the Treasury in January.
Outside the metro, the provincial government intended building 12275 houses this year with its R1.639bn share of the budget, and to service 14,000 sites in the province, he said.
In the financial year ending today, 13,100 houses were built and 12,000 sites serviced, he said.
- The New Age
Briefing the media yesterday on his department’s R2.584bn budget for 2011-12, almost R400m more than the 2010-11 allocation, Madikizela said the problems arose from the housing demand databases managed by those municipalities.
Explaining the minister’s concerns, top bureaucrat in the provincial housing department, Mbulelo Tshangana, said many of the databases, where hopeful beneficiaries first register for a house, were flawed and incomplete, with some using manual documentation that was vulnerable to misuse.
Dedicated computer systems for input of data in municipalities, and which would give the ministry access to this information, were on the way across the province, he said.
He was reluctant to “name and shame” these municipalities, and insisted that the department was working on boosting capacity, although another housing official did not deny the Drakenstein municipality, with its long waiting list, was weak in this regard.
Clean and accurate databases with the names of people lined up for houses were vital to ensure transparency and fairness, so that certain beneficiaries with incomes of less than R3,500 a month, could not “jump the queue”, he said.
The other 15 non-metropolitan municipalities in the province were also getting ongoing assistance.
Madikizela earlier said that there was also “generally very poor planning” in municipalities, although for reasons not directly linked to poor database management, when it came to housing delivery.
As a result, money was taken away from three municipalities for use elsewhere.
“If you don’t use it you lose it,” he told reporters, in a blunt reference to the province’s struggling municipalities.
In his budget speech to the Western Cape legislature later yesterday, he said Kannaland, Prince Albert and Laingsburg had their entire allocations withdrawn in February, but that this was mostly due to constraints around the provision of bulk infrastructure such as sewerage.
Meanwhile, 20% of the province’s housing budget now goes directly to the city of Cape Town, which was taking greater responsibility for housing delivery in the metro.
This meant that the city got a R362m “slice” to fund the servicing of about 10,000 more sites in the metro area, said Madikizela.
This is according to changes introduced by the national Department of Human Settlements and the Treasury in January.
Outside the metro, the provincial government intended building 12275 houses this year with its R1.639bn share of the budget, and to service 14,000 sites in the province, he said.
In the financial year ending today, 13,100 houses were built and 12,000 sites serviced, he said.
- The New Age
No comments:
Post a Comment