The Ministry of Public Works and Infrastructure has been tasked with conducting a government-wide investigation into hijacked buildings in the country’s metros.
This comes after the meeting of an inter-ministerial committee, which is looking into last week’s Marshalltown disaster in which 76 people perished in a fire in a hijacked State building.
Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Sihle Zikalala will lead the task of identifying all hijacked buildings in the country, as well as indicate what should be done with all those properties.
As the department responsible for State property management, the department was already in the process of identifying misappropriated State properties within its own asset register.
Out of 29 000 buildings in the department’s asset register throughout the country, the department has embarked on a process to recover some 1 260 properties that have been flagged as being illegally occupied under Operation Bring Back.
This includes:
- Recovery of stolen or illegally transferred properties and hijacked buildings.
- Regularisation of occupancy in properties due to legacy housing policies.
- Further investigation and identification of more properties that are illegally occupied.
The department launched Operation Bring Back to operationalise investigations and recovery of those assets that are illegally occupied or stolen.
The department will intensify the operation in all metros and municipalities throughout the country.
“Each metro or municipality will have to indicate how many properties it has on its asset register, the state of those assets, what they are used for and its current status. Depending on the status of those properties, the Ministry of Public Works and Infrastructure will recommend what should be done,” the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure said in a statement.
Among the current decisions of the department’s Operation Bring Back, a nationwide call is to be made for individuals and institutions to avail themselves for amnesty and to regularise their occupation of properties in line with the applicable laws of the country.
These properties could be sold to the individuals concerned, be leased or be used as a rental stocks.
“This intervention by the Ministry of Public Works and Infrastructure will include a forensic investigation of the asset register and the identification of illegally occupied properties without amnesty and may lead to the institution of criminal prosecutions and/or expropriation of unclaimed properties,” the department said.
The department will, as a matter of urgency, commission multidisciplinary built environment consultants to investigate the structural, civil, building, electrical, mechanical and safety integrity of the identified buildings and make recommendations on how to rejuvenate the CBDs of all metros and municipalities. – SAnews.gov.za
