Metro blamed for housing deadlock

A lack of co-operation from the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality has caused a deadlock in the Eastern Cape department of human settlements’ building of RDP houses in the city.

A shortage of town planners across Eastern Cape municipalities is affecting the department’s ability to establish townships.

And underperforming contractors whose contracts were terminated by the department could still secure tenders because officials failed to blacklist them.

These were some of the failures highlighted by human settlements portfolio committee chair Makhaya Twabu, while tabling the department’s annual report in Bhisho on Tuesday.

Twabu recommended that the funds allocated to the metro be reallocated to performing municipalities.

The metro currently has an 80,000 housing backlog.