By Tsila Makhuvha

Housing Minister Brigitte Mabandla today officially gave 1 216 homes to families living at Welbedacht, previously a slum for poor people.

Today's hand over is part of government's project to clear the eThekwini Municipality of all slums as envisaged in the urban renewal strategy. The project aims to delivery 10 869 houses.

"The eThekwini Council has committed itself to the funding of services and has contributed approximately R70 million to achieve this object", said Mabandla. The project was initiated in 2001 after the approval of R200 million for housing subsidies by the department of housing in KwaZulu-Natal.

Ethekwini Mayor Obed Mlaba said proposed housing interventions had been divided into categories according to the municipality's Informal Settlement Programme. "These were In-situ upgrade; Relocation; Partial in-situ upgrade and partial relocation; and approved in-situ upgrade housing project", said the mayor.

The minister said the beneficiaries of the project would be receiving their subsidies from the Department of Housing as well as a substantial top-up from the eThekwini Municipality.

"This is to ensure that levels of service were provided such as tarred bus routes and internal roads to eThekwini Municipality standards, sewer reticulation, water and electricity to each household", said Mabandla. "The settlements selected had been earmarked for complete relocation due to a variety of reasons such as the threat of flooding, major environmental health risks, unstable land, fire risks and the size of the settlement which may be too small to be feasible for an upgrade project," said Mabandla.

Already the construction of houses and services was approximately 60 percent complete with anticipated completion of Welbedacht East and West and Parkgate by the end of 2004, she said. She added that, to date, the expenditure on the Slum Clearance Project equals R218 million. These were the Welbedacht East (5500 Sites) and Welbedacht West (2900 sites) both located in the South. Parkgate (1530 sites) and Waterloo Phase 6 (600 sites) both located in the North and Namibia Stop 8 in Inanda (2500 sites), and Joe Slovo lnformal Settlement in Lamontville (216 Sites).

"We are serious about improve the conditions people in the so-called slums live. That is the reason we had already started with these kinds of projects to move people to better environments,' said the minister.

The minister also handed over eight houses to families affected by the tragic bus accident on Sunday near Chatsworth, south of Durban. - BuaNews

South African Cities Network: www.sacities.net