Housing cleanup
[caption id="attachment_101150" align="alignright" width="300"] Mayor Danny Jordaan shakes hands with a resident at the Helenvale Resource Centre. Picture: EUGENE COETZEE[/caption]
Twelve senior state officials seconded to rescue troubled Bay human settlements department
A MAJOR shake-up of Nelson Mandela Bay’s troubled housing department is under way. A team of 12 national bureaucrats has been sent to the metro to clean up what has for several years been a seemingly untouchable department mired in endless allegations, secrecy and power struggles.
In another development, Bay mayor Danny Jordaan has suggested that the housing beneficiary list be published to put an end to the jumping of queues.
“The housing lists cannot be a secret anymore,” he said.
Following the recent suspension of the Bay’s housing boss, Lindile Petuna, and director of housing delivery Mvuleni Mapu, two senior government officials will take over their jobs in the interim.
The council yesterday approved Department of Public Works deputy director Mandla Mabuza as the Bay’s acting human settlements executive director, and Gauteng human settlements department chief director Mandla George to take over Mapu’s job.
This is part of the government’s support package to the metro to clean up the municipality.
The matter was discussed at a council meeting held at the Helenvale Resource Centre, which got off to a rocky start when residents blocked entry to the premises.
Their complaints related to upcoming development projects in Helenvale. The gates were opened after some of the residents spoke to Jordaan.
Human settlements acting director-general Mbulelo Tshangana presented his department’s intervention plan at the meeting, saying the metro was plagued by a number of challenges which they planned to eradicate. These include: ý The controversial roster system, which has about 400 housing contractors registered on the municipality’s supplier database;
- Inefficient management systems;
- The housing revolving fund which the metro dips into to use more than the set R100-million threshold, making it difficult to claim the money back from Bhisho; and
- The shambolic housing waiting list, which has seen thousands of beneficiaries’ homes occupied by the wrong people.
The news comes as the government is set to give the metro R4.6-billion to build houses and install sanitation over three years.
This money would build and rectify about 6 800 houses over that period.
The metro is battling an 80 000 housing backlog and has 25 000 houses that need to be rectified.
-Rochelle de Kock
