The Department of Human Settlements notched an unqualified audit opinion for the 2014/15 financial year, acting Director-General Mbulelo Tshangana said this afternoon.
Presenting the Department’s Annual Report to the Portfolio Committee on Human Settlements, Tshangana said the department was not content with an unqualified audit opinion.
“We need to move to a clean audit where there is no emphasis of matters. That is what we are aspiring to as the management of the department and I think it is achievable,” he said.
The department spent 99 percent of the R28bn budget that went to provinces and municipalities.
“On the financial side we look good in terms of expenditure but on the non-financial side we do not look good at all because we only achieved 70 percent of our targets,” Tshangana told the committee.
The Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF), amongst others, instructed the department to make sure that 149 000 households were living in adequate housing during the year under review. However, the department could only deliver 120 327 of these.
A total of 150 000 households in informal settlements should have been upgraded in the 2014/15 financial year and only 74 017 of these were delivered.
A total of 112 600 individual units for subsidy housing market was the target during the year under review and only 95 210 individual units were provided.
On title deeds, 59 029 were handed over in the 2014/15 financial year by provinces out of a target of 112 600.
“This is one area that remains red and has not changed. The biggest challenge here is funding for this exercise and the capacity of provinces and municipalities to manage it,” said Tshangana.
As an example, whilst Gauteng had a full conveyancers unit to manage these transactions, other provinces did not. However, everything was being done working with the Estate Agency Affairs Board to make the programme perform.
Through the Social Housing Regulatory Authority, the department was supposed to have provided 7 400 rental units during the year under review and could only deliver 2 696 units.
A total of 116 448 home loans for households in the affordable housing market was the target for the 2014/15 financial year and financial institutions granted 26 239 of these for households earning less than R15 000 a month whilst 62 952 loans were issued by Development Finance Institutions of the department.
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