MEC Mokonyane Urges Housing Summit To Review Housing Delivery

Tuesday, 24 July 2007

Gauteng MEC for Housing Ms Nomvula Mokonyane has called on stakeholders attending the Housing Summit, at Birchwood conference centre, in Boksburg, Ekurhuleni today to review key issues that are currently slowing down delivery of housing in the province. These include allocation of subsidies to individuals as opposed to projects, red tape involved in the approval of projects as well as lack of co-coordinated intergovernmental strategies to improve customer service at the majority of government’s service points.

The two day Summit held under the theme “Building a Global City Region through Sustainable Human Settlements Beyond 2009” aims to, among other things, to create a platform for discussions on the latest models in Housing Development, draw lessons (both positive and negative) from previous strategies applied in Gauteng and internationally and evaluate the current housing policies and strategic direction of the Department as well as lay the foundation for a new strategic direction in the creation of Sustainable Human Settlements in Gauteng.

Mokonyane said the current policy in which housing beneficiaries were linked to a subsidy was causing a number of problems as there are numerous incidents of missing beneficiaries in the province due to constant movement of people. She argued that Department has achieved tremendous success in projects such as the Alexandra K206 were housing beneficiaries are currently being allocated according to a block.

“Our expectation from this summit is to ensure that we consolidate our plans and accelerate housing delivery to overcome the current backlog. There is no reason why the Department should remain married to policies and systems that are not assisting in fast tracking service delivery,” added MEC Mokonyane

When commenting about red-tape, the MEC noted that the housing delivery process from planning to implementation is unnecessarily long and slows housing delivery. The Department has reviewed the entire delivery process in order to implement projects speedily.

With regards to service delivery Mokonyane said “We need public servants that must be aware that any incompetence undermines the integrity of government. Where public servants resist in going the extra mile, government priorities and targets are compromised

MEC Mokonyane said the Summit was faced with a number of challenges to tackle key housing obstacles including the need to deal with uneven capacity within municipalities to deliver houses, migration levels into the province, improving the capacity of small and medium contractors, centralized planning and strengthening of public private partnerships for mixed housing developments.

Mokonyane also announced that the department has taken a decision to stretch the subsidy band from between R3 500 -R7000 to R10 000. This move will enable more people who fall into the low income category to qualify for government subsidy when buying houses through the banks that have partnered with the Department.