R192m to fix RDP houses in E Cape

The Eastern Cape department of human settlements has set aside R192-million to rectify more than 100000 decrepit RDP houses in the current financial year.

The lion’s share of that amount, R168-million, will be spent on fixing houses built between 1994 and 2008, while R24-million will be used to rectify houses built pre-1994.

Rectification programmes are sometimes hampered by budget constraints, human settlements MEC Helen Sauls-August said in a report she recently submitted to the Bhisho legislature.

The department said 23719 houses identified prior to 2008 had been rectified, but it would “take quite a considerable time to complete the programme, considering budgetary constraints and national Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s directive to halt the rectification programme” in 2014-15.

In her written parliamentary response to questions posed by DA MPL Sanele Magaqa, Sauls-August said a total of 113000 houses in 191 housing projects across the province needed rectification.

The hardest-hit was Nelson Mandela Bay, with close to 51000 houses needing rectification.

It is followed by Chris Hani district, with 22000 defective homes, Buffalo City Metro with 10500, OR Tambo District with 10022, Joe Gqabi with 8600, Sarah Baartman with 5663, Amathole with 4540 and Alfred Nzo with just under 2000 defective houses.

The houses have to be rectified because of:

• Poor workmanship by contractors;
• Use of inferior construction materials;
• Lack of adequate planning and technical inputs, mainly around foundation designs; and

lThe use of unregistered contractors as most of the houses were built before the advent of the National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC), which is mandated to handle building.

Sauls-August said some of the houses had since been demolished because “where rectification exceeds the quantum, the choice is to demolish and rebuild”.

Some of those whose houses have since been demolished, however, were not provided with alternative accommodation.

In an interview, Magaqa said it was inhumane to expect people to live in houses “that could crumble down” on them at any moment.

“It is dangerous to expect people to continue to inhabit houses that are not fit for human occupation.

“However, demolishing houses without providing alternative assistance is also not the answer.

“With the recent ministerial directive reducing the funding of grant allocation for rectification, I believe the Eastern Cape department of human settlements does not have what it takes to deliver their mandate of providing adequate housing for all,” Magaqa said.

Departmental spokesman Lwandile Sicwetsha said the houses to be rectified were those that had been “assessed” in both pre- and post-1994 periods, up until 2008.

He said they had been directed not to exceed 10% of their annual budget on rectification as it may impact on building new homes.

“As a department, we are mindful that we need to ensure that while it is necessary to implement rectification, it must not have adverse effects on building new homes.

“We are quite conversant that it will take considerable time to complete the programme because the department cannot rectify all the defective houses at once and has thus submitted all outstanding assessment reports with the required costing implication to the office of the minister,” Sicwetsha said.

He added that the exact total expenditure on the rectification programme “is not readily available as it requires an accurate determination as certain projects were done then by municipalities”.

“The NHBRC is compelled to implement, in term of the Housing Act, punitive measures against non-compliant contractors by either deregistering them and/or blacklisting them.” — asandan@dispatch.co.za