By More Matshediso
Pretoria - About 6 888 housing units will be built in the 2014/15 financial year in the North West to put decent roofs over the heads of those who live in informal settlements.
This was announced by the MEC for Local Government and Human Settlements, Collen Maine, during his budget speech in the North West Legislature on Wednesday.
More than R1.5 billion has been allocated to housing developments in the North West, and the MEC said his department will use 100% of its conditional grant in the current financial year.
He committed his department to build these homes and ensure that beneficiaries become owners.
“We want to create access to clean water and decent sanitation and provision of tenure to the beneficiaries. We are doing this in order to achieve our objective, and bring comfort to our people living in informal settlements across the province.
“Thus far, we managed to build about 4 538 through the Informal Settlements Upgrading in the last financial year,” said MEC Maine.
He said construction has already begun in mining towns and that close to 2 000 housing units will be built in the next three years in the Marikana Extension 2 Integrated Development Project (IDP).
He said the Marikana Extension 2 IDP is implemented in partnership with LONMIN and Rustenburg local municipality.
MEC Maine said the first phase of 292 Breaking New Grounds units, which is already under construction, and 252 community residential units are planned for the current financial year.
Issuing title deeds to owners
He said his department will further hand over 6 900 title deeds to household owners across the province.
“… There is a backlog of eradicating title deeds, but the efforts will be doubled to make sure that we win the battle of making sure that communities own their properties,” he said. - SAnews.gov.za
