PETER DICKSON, East London | Wednesday 11.00m.
CIVIL servants in the Eastern Cape are paying as little as R7,50 a month to rent state-owned houses. Eastern Cape legislators warned on Tuesday the state needs to charge market-related rentals for government properties to offset maintenance costs alone.
The call follows the release by Bisho’s Public Works Department of monthly rental figures for state-owned accommodation that show some Eastern Cape civil servants pay between R7,50 and R32,43 in Despatch, R85,53 in Graaff-Rienet, between R19,78 and R75 in Grahamstown, between R14,75 and R36,67 in Hamburg, and R15,40 and R16,70 in Peddie.
At the old Ciskei ministerial complex outside Bisho where MECs now reside, rental of government property is between R200 and R400. The ANC constituency office in Peddie is leased at R400 and the Bisho office for R200.
The department says, however, that civil servants pay 4% of their salaries or a maximum of R200 for properties occupied in line with the Public Service Staff Code agreed to in the central bargaining chamber, while private tenants are charged market-related rentals. The department says is has asked the Cabinet to sell surplus houses to ease the maintenance burden.
Meanwhile, the auditor-general has been asked by the legislature to condemn as unauthorised expenditure R17679 spent on hotel accommodation by 13 MPLs who have not been allocated houses by the department. At the same time, R50000 has been allocated to renovate houses that six opposition MPLs refused to move into due to disrepair.