The article “More money for repairs” (Herald 29th April 2010) by Patrick Cull has reference.
It is disgraceful that annually millions of rand has to be spent rectifying RDP houses nationally and in this province.
The spending of more than R280 million to rectify 1499 houses in the Metro means, in fact, that taxpayers are paying twice for the building of the same house.
As much of the problem has been caused by Provincial Housing not checking the bona fides of emerging contractors and not having regular inspections by inspectors at each stage of the building process, the tired excuse of Capacity constraints is unacceptable and an insult to the inhabitants of these houses.
I am engaging with the Provincial Housing department on this matter as to date the department can’t accurately quantify how many houses in the province need rectification.
The vision of housing must be more focused on empowering citizens and communities to take care of their own housing and provide them choice as to how this is to be done.
By providing a beneficiary with a serviced site one allows the beneficiary to engage their own contractor, build themselves, build incrementally or join a housing co operative.
While progress is being made towards this by the new Expanded Peoples Housing Process (EPHP) some 8000 sites to be budgeted for this financial year, greater emphasis must prevail to ensure that the PHP process takes over the main stream of housing provision from RDP housing.
In this way, the empowering of individuals and communities will change our society from a state dependant recipient mentality to an open society concept where citizens decide with pride the choices they make to fulfil their housing needhh
Leave a Reply