AFTER taking office in August, Housing MEC Thobile Mhlahlo vowed not to allow a cent of his R1,2-billion in conditional grants to remain unspent, and set the department a target of building 15000 new homes before the end of this financial year.
He said the department would recall allocated budgets from all municipalities that were not spending them, so they could be redistributed to other projects.
“At the beginning of this term I called public and private sector financial institutions together at a breakfast meeting to introduce my ambitious multi- million-rand housing turnaround delivery plan.”
He said major banks, including Absa, FNB, Standard Bank and Nedbank, as well as other public and government financial institutions such as the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), the National Housing Finance Corporation (NHFC) and the National Urban Reconstruction and Housing Agency (Nurcha) were already working with his department on housing projects.
About R464-million of the conditional grants have already been spent, and Mhlahlo has approved funding amounting to R285-million for other housing projects in the province.
“The consultative breakfast meeting was a culmination of meetings that I had with contractors, municipalities and NHBRC as part of my intervention plan to remove stumbling blocks (projects that had stalled due to lack of finance) in the province.
“After the meeting with all the banks I had individual one-on-one meetings with Absa, FNB and Nedbank.
“FNB has purchased a pineapple field near the Da Gama Textiles factory on the way to East London that is big enough to build 6000 houses on and I have appointed a task team to facilitate the process of engaging other stakeholders like Buffalo City to come on board.”
Mhlahlo has handed over 500 houses from the Sundays River municipality, 300 in the Nomathamsanqa township in Addo and 200 in Kirkwood.
Some 5475 houses will be handed over in Nelson Mandela Bay shortly. Of these, 900 will be handed over in Joe Slovo before Christmas, while others will be handed over in areas like Bethelsdorp, Matthew Goniwe and Chatty before the end of this financial year.
“Some of the beneficiaries of these houses are seasonal farm workers who depend on old age grants, domestic workers and other people who earn less than R1000 a month,” he said.
Mhlahlo also introduced the Sakhi‘themba graduate development programme in October.
“The project is aimed at creating employment opportunities for young people and also to address the challenge of lack of monitoring.
“It will also be reviewed after two years.”
Some of the problems Mhlahlo said he had faced during his 100 days of office included:
Contractors assuming developer status with limited capacity and resources.
Slow implementation of projects by implementing agents.
Slow processes of municipalities – especially on blocked projects.
Poor performance of contractors.
Lack of monitoring and evaluation of projects.
Land availability.
“We have tried to solve some of these problems, but now the biggest challenge we are facing is that of municipalities not spending the monies allocated to them.
“We have found that they do want to spend the money but many did not know how. My department is assisting those municipalities that want to be helped,” he said.
Khanyi Ndabeni
The Herald Eastern Cape - Port Elizabeth,Eastern Cape,South Africa
No comments:
Post a Comment