North West Housing pursues municipalities to account for R908 million housing grants

The North West Department of Human Settlements, Public Safety & Liaison is finalising physical and financial audits of the R908 million transferred to municipalities over the past 10 years where the said institutions across the province could not account for what they did with housing conditional grants transferred to them, MEC Desbo Mohono reported to the Standing Committee on Public Account (Scopa) in the Provincial Legislature on Monday.

MEC Mohono’s department had launched an investigation in partnership with provincial internal audit and the Auditor-General (AG) to find out on how the monies which were paid to various municipalities as tranche payments for construction of low-cost houses were spent.

Through the investigations, the department has reconciled over four-hundred million of the R908 million owed to the department by municipalities and it will  continue with the process of reconciliation in order to account for the full amount.

In the past financial year the AG gave the department a qualified report due to the R908 million that the department could not account on how it was spend by municipalities.

Mohono told the committee that her department had taken a decisive decision to stop tranche payments to municipalities as most were unable to account on how the funds were utilised.

“We have cancelled all tranche payments to municipalities and we are currently terminating all such contracts and taking over those projects. This is a way of correcting the past wrong-doings and making sure that we deliver quality houses to our people,” she said.

The department is currently unblocking most of the projects, that came to a standstill due to the monies spent by municipalities towards among others salaries instead of housing delivery for which the funds were intended .

Chairperson of Scopa, Basie Moepeng, on behalf of the committee commended the department for its tremendous improvement and that the committee shares the AG's view on the remarkable progress though there is a need for it to address the challenge of capacity.

Enquiries:
Lesiba Moses Kgwele
Tel: 018 391 0420
Cell: 083 629 1987
E-mail: LKgwele@nwpg.gov.za

Province

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