By Nozipho Dlamini

Johannesburg – The government will build 200 000 emergency houses by 2006, Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu told the closing session of the national municipal housing indaba hosted by her department and the South African Local Government Association (Salga) on Sunday.

She said she would be meeting the provincial Housing MECs and the Salga leadership this week to address the issue of people living in dangerous areas, such as in dilapidated apartment buildings.

She said the 200 000 houses the department planned to build by 2006 would be occupied by people who lived in places that compromised their lives.

“In terms of the comprehensive plan for sustainable human settlements we envisage that municipalities will play a much more substantial role in the delivery of decent houses to our people,” Sisulu said.

Sisulu said her department would assign some housing functions to selected municipalities accredited on the basis of sound funding arrangements, accountability, and appropriate governance arrangement.

“Such accreditation will be structured in a manner that enables accelerated delivery on key housing priorities manifesting in our local areas,” said Sisulu.

She said the reality was that communities were only interested in the actual delivery of housing, and not which sphere of government was responsible for that delivery.

“They are also not interested in hearing about the convoluted processes within government that seems to fail in realising housing opportunities for all,” the minister said. “The recent protests across the municipalities have highlighted these realities.”

She urged local governments to create “fully fledged” housing departments in every municipality to tackle the backlogs in housing delivery.

Salga’s Dickson Masemola said his organisation would continue to work with the Department of Provincial and Local Government to ensure housing delivery assignments were implemented.

“The availability of suitable land for housing delivery is one of the key success factors in ensuring sustainable human settlements. To this effect, Salga is encouraging all municipalities to give priority to land for housing before disposing their land assets for other purposes,” said Masemola.

Source: BuaNews