By Nangamso Mabindla

The Buffalo City Municipality wants to speed up the R250-million Duncan Village Redevelopment Initiative (DVR). This was the upshot of a two-day workshop on the project.

A major step towards upgrading Duncan Village was taken in February 2004 when the City launched the DVR, which is aimed at improving the lives of residents in the impoverished township. The housing project, in partnership with the Dutch companies Van Der Leij Foundation (now Intervolve) and Bouwfonds Nederlandse Gemeenten, is expected to be completed within 10 years.

When Executive Mayor Zintle Peter took office earlier this year, she told a visiting Dutch delegation, led by that country's minister of housing, Sybilla Dekker, that she had urged the City's officials to speed up the process.

In response to Peter's call, the City held a two-day workshop on 18 and 19 May aimed at exploring the challenges facing the project.

Speaking about the importance of the workshop, Nomhizana Sityi, the development planning portfolio head, said the City had the unenviable task of changing the face of Duncan Village.

"The reason we called all the municipal departments [together] is because we want to bring you on board as we attempt to change the face of Duncan Village. We need to work as a collective to realise the mayor's dream of improving lives in the township," Sityi said.

"The purpose of this workshop is for us to come up with a clear plan entailing how we aim to achieve our goals."

Although there had been no visible progress in Duncan Village since its launch in 2004, the department of development planning had conducted surveys of the township in the interim.

Talking about current problems in Duncan Village, the City's director for development planning, Craig Sam, said there was a lack of infrastructure in the area. "We have conducted surveys … to ensure that we know what we will be dealing with when we implement the project."

Sam said if Buffalo City wanted to be in line with the rest of the country and eradicate shacks by 2014, it needed to overcome potential obstacles to the completion of the DVR project, which would help ease the city's 75 000 housing backlog.

"That means we have little time left to change the face of Duncan Village," he added.

The City's senior communications officer, Mamnkeli Ngam, said the workshop was timely. "This workshop has encouraged all our departments to work in unison if we want to achieve our goal of improving Duncan Village."

With winter in full swing it was imperative for the City to talk about eradicating unsafe shacks and minimising the annual shack fires and flooding in Duncan Village.

Source: Buffalo City