By Chris Khumalo
ETHEKWINI Municipality has unveiled an ambitious plan to remove residents from over 50 unsafe and unhygienic informal settlements by the second half of this year, according to head of the eThekwini Housing Department, Couglan Pather.
Pather said these residents would be allocated proper housing within five large greenfield projects which would have a total of 10 500 sites.
"Apart from these complete reallocations there will also be additional reallocations affecting families currently residing in the land identified for infrastructure projects and housing upgrade programmes," said Pather.
This slum clearance project will be undertaken over phases with R2.9 billion to be spent over a period of ten years.
Pather said running in parallel to these greenfield projects were a number of other upgrade projects which had been packaged for implementation in the previously disadvantaged areas of the municipality.
"These upgrade projects affect approximately 32 000 families," said Pather.
Also, the municipality was in the process of planning phases two and three of slums clearance in conjunction with the KwaZulu-Natal Housing Department.
"Approximately 80 000 households will be addressed over a six-year period. While phase one is focused largely with the central area of Durban, phases two and three will begin to address settlements across the regions of the municipality," he explained.
He said the beneficiaries of the project would receive their subsidies from the Housing Department.
"The total cost of the projects in terms of housing allocation will be in the region of R2.9 billion. The municipality will also commit itself to the funding of services to municipal standards as it has been done in phase one," he said.
These services, he said, included tarred bus routes and internal roads, sewer reticulation, and the provision of water and electricity to each household.
Source: BuaNews
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