Provinces lose housing grants over poor performance

Creag

Creag

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Pretoria - Two underperforming provinces will lose R463 million in low-cost housing grants, which will be redistributed to provinces that met their targets, Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale announced on Tuesday.

A total of R263 million in Human Settlements grant funding will be moved from Free State and R200 million from KwaZulu-Natal. The money will be reassigned to Northern Cape and Limpopo - provinces that have achieved their delivery targets and need additional funding.

The Northern Cape will use R182 million for the construction of 2 070 new houses across the province, as well as the upgrading of 350 units in informal settlements. Some money will also be set aside for the integrated residential developments.

Limpopo, meanwhile, will use R131 million for the construction of 5 300 houses in 17 districts as part of the province's Rural Housing Programme.

The remaining R150 million will go to the National Rectification Programme, which mainly repairs badly-built houses in various provinces.

"Two provinces which were earlier in the group of four under-performers - Western Cape and Eastern Cape - remain on my watch-list and their performance will be closely monitored," Sexwale said.

The minister said it was important to note that the R463 million would remain in the housing delivery process.

The money would be utilised to address the housing delivery backlog and the needs of the poor instead of being rolled over or returned to National Treasury, he added. - BuaNews
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Source.

At last government is sending the right message to the provinces.
 
I dunno. So those destitute people in the bad provinces will suffer while the politicians will sit back and laugh it off? I'd rather see stricter punishment or replacement.
 
"Two provinces which were earlier in the group of four under-performers - Western Cape and Eastern Cape - remain on my watch-list and their performance will be closely monitored," Sexwale said
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Western cape in the same boat as the Eastern,interesting.
 
Kosmik said:
I dunno. So those destitute people in the bad provinces will suffer while the politicians will sit back and laugh it off? I'd rather see stricter punishment or replacement.
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Good point. Only the homeless truly suffers in this move. So it should be recall or recall. Ah! Maybe recall. And it should be the top brass including premier, housing MEC among others who cop it.
 
This reminds me of Sipho our ex-comms minister spending just 10% of his budget last year - was anything done to him?
Nah, he and Zuma's mos dik tjommas so he actually got a promotion.
 
McT said:
Good point. Only the homeless truly suffers in this move. So it should be recall or recall. Ah! Maybe recall. And it should be the top brass including premier, housing MEC among others who cop it.
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I agree they should rather improve the underperforming provinces (mostly by firing useless employees), but that would take time and right now redistributing the funds means that more houess are built quicker. It's to the benefit of the homeless in the bigger picture, but not a solution to the problem.
 
This is shocking - how hard can it be for a government to spend their allocated budget amidst the service delivery protests...? Re-allocating the funds is not enough, heads must roll instead.
 
Kosmik said:
I dunno. So those destitute people in the bad provinces will suffer while the politicians will sit back and laugh it off? I'd rather see stricter punishment or replacement.
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These provinces are not utilising their budgets due to poor performance. Money is sitting idle where it could be used elsewhere. However as JB mentions above, heads should roll as well.
 
I think the building of RDP houses is not as simple as just getting money, and doing it.

It is easy to look only at the figures (budget not used), and ignore the reason behind it not being spend.
 
Kosmik said:
I dunno. So those destitute people in the bad provinces will suffer while the politicians will sit back and laugh it off? I'd rather see stricter punishment or replacement.
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Yup punish the poor, not the politicians who messed it up in the first place. Great logic that...
 
Nod said:
I think the building of RDP houses is not as simple as just getting money, and doing it.

It is easy to look only at the figures (budget not used), and ignore the reason behind it not being spend.
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All those complexities should have been taken into consideration when the budget was being drawn out. Surely the provinces concerned submitted the budget requirements and were duly awarded the funds. Now they have problems spending the funds???? That just doesn't make sense.

Incompetence and general laziness cannot be used as valid reasons.
 
JungleBoy said:
All those complexities should have been taken into consideration when the budget was being drawn out. Surely the provinces concerned submitted the budget requirements and were duly awarded the funds. Now they have problems spending the funds???? That just doesn't make sense.

Incompetence and general laziness cannot be used as valid reasons.
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You also have to allocate/procure land from somewhere. Do proper impact studies on identified land, get approval from Land Affairs, etc.

If the whole process was transparent we would be able to put the blame where it is deserved.
 
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