Pretoria - As from next week Tuesday, the North West will start deregistering untraceable housing beneficiaries in a multimillion housing development project.
Over 100 housing beneficiaries who have failed to take occupation of their completed houses in the R94.8 million housing development project at Ga-Moeka village near Makapanstad stand to be deregistered and their houses reallocated to new beneficiaries.
This action follows an intervention meeting between the provincial Department of Human Settlements, Public Safety & Liaison, Moretele Local Municipality and housing development contractors held on Wednesday.
The meeting raised concerns on the inability of the municipality to trace beneficiaries, which resulted in many unoccupied completed houses being illegally occupied and/or vandalised, and contractors not being paid as registered beneficiaries had not signed the necessary letters.
The meeting also noted that low cost houses were being built for undeserving beneficiaries, some of whom had already built massive houses, resulting in low cost houses being built next to the big houses in Ga-Motla village.
Provincial MEC for Human Settlements, Public Safety & Liaison, Desbo Mohono, gave an instruction that the nearby informal settlement be prioritized, instead of undeserving beneficiaries to avoid low cost houses being used as store houses and or being rented out.
"Though some of the beneficiaries had qualified as beneficiaries earlier and it would legally be right to provide them with housing, it would be morally wrong for us to proceed with construction of low cost houses for them now that their situation has improved," said Mohono.
A subsidy administration team from the provincial department and municipal officials is scheduled to visit the villages on Tuesday to deregister beneficiaries which the municipality cannot trace and register new beneficiaries to prevent illegal occupation.
The intervention team is also scheduled to visit Rustenburg Local Municipality on Friday to address housing delivery issues.
Mohono said follow-up visits to municipalities are a sequel to earlier province-wide technical engagements with municipalities, housing developers and contractors. This is intended to accelerate housing delivery, eradicate shoddy work and terminate contracts of non-performing contractors.
