The Portfolio Committee on Human Settlements calls for a concerted effort towards ensuring timeous provision of integrated human settlements.
The Committee said this as it rounded up its week-long oversight visit in Western Cape where it sought to assess how municipalities have fared in implementing the human settlements strategic plans. “We have seen how each municipality planned to address their human settlements challenges and have also picked up that; for them to achieve their goals, they would require support from all spheres of government mandated to assist in the provision of dignified human settlements,” said Ms Nomhle Dambuza, Committee Chairperson.
According to the Committee, some municipalities had plans to provide houses to their residents but still had challenges with provision of basic services such as water and sanitation. Some had challenges with regard to the provision of electricity and others had challenges of inaccessible roads. Municipalities visited were Matzikama, Cedeberg, Swartland, Bergrivier, Saldhana Bay and City of Cape Town.
The Committee said departments such as Energy, Water Affairs and Transport as well as Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs had funds that municipalities could access in order to be assisted in addressing their challenges. The Committee also said it was disturbed to establish that there was poor workmanship in this day and age where houses with less than a year had structural defects as seen in Saldanha Bay municipality.
During the public consultation process, residents of Wesbank (Vredenburg) and Middlepos (Saldanha Bay) also told the Committee of their frustrations regarding poor sewer system which resulted in them having blocked toilets and leaking taps due to poor water connection as well as doors with huge gaps underneath which became problematic when it rained. According to the Committee, all houses built post the establishment of the National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC) had to comply with the set norms and standards.
The Committee also noted the use of bucket system in some of the municipalities it visited and called on the affected municipalities to speed up their plans of addressing this challenge. The other challenge municipalities faced was the non-availability of land on which houses could be built. In this regard, the Committee said it was important for municipalities to conduct land audits to determine which land belonged to; the state, to parastatals and which land was privately-owned. Municipalities were also asked to determine the availability of landed property, which the Committee said would make it easier to access for human settlements purposes.
Helping with land audit challenges in municipalities, the Committee called on the Housing Development Agency (HDA) to come on board and assist the municipalities. “With municipalities facing funding and technical challenges, we cannot expect them to effectively carry out this audit hence we advise HDA to assist this municipality with land audit.” HDA is a human settlements (public) entity tasked with a legislative mandate to fast-track identification, acquisition, assemble and release of state, private and communally owned land for human settlement developments.
The Committee wanted the Department of Human Settlements to provide a report on how much was budget for purchasing land and the quantity that has been purchased to date. The Committee further wanted the three spheres of government to work together in ensuring that there was integration of RDP houses and rental stock housing to help municipalities with revenue generation. Calls to address the “gap in the market” were also made by the Committee. “We also need to find ways to cater for those earning above the R3500 threshold but cannot afford to obtain bank loans,” said Ms Dambuza.
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