A number of senior Western Cape housing department officials are facing disciplinary action following the release of a forensic audit report that detailed irregular payments, gross mismanagement and corruption involving R17-million.
On Monday, limited details of the report’s findings were released by the provincial Housing Minister Nomatyala Hangana. It found financial irregularities and poor management controls, construction work signed off without compulsory site visits and smaller-than-planned houses being built at a loss to the province.
Although the legal process against several senior officials has already started, the province is keeping mum on the names and amounts involved. The report is still under discussion by the premier and director general.
Meanwhile, toilets in the veld and unfinished Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) housing developments are dotted across Limpopo. Democratic Alliance MP Janet Semple, who visited the province, will submit a report on her discoveries to the parliamentary housing committee. ”[Government] has tried to address the national situation. What happens in the provinces is another story,” she said.
Her report details:
RDP houses with no roofs after the construction programme stalled in 2001 in Maswanganyi village, Giyani.
500 VIP (ventilated improved privy) toilets built in 1999 at Leboeng, but no houses.
Toilets and some infrastructure but no houses at Marualeng.
Only two houses and some infrastructure built since 1999 at Sefikeng while building materials are being stored on site.
500 toilets, slabs and water pipes, but no houses at Xikundu village.
Only one of 600 houses has been built at a development at Nancefield in Musina where 60% of residents still use the bucket system to remove human excrement and other sewage.
Limpopo housing spokesperson Mbangiseni Masia confirmed some housing projects were unfinished. He said delays, the cost of land transfers and lack of capacity among developers had emerged as key difficulties.
He said corrective steps were underway, including legal action against some defaulting developers and the transfer of incomplete housing projects to councils.
”We have put in place mechanisms to ensure this does not happen again,” Masia said, adding that Limpopo had emerged as the best provider of rural housing of all provinces. Free State and Eastern Cape housing officials have since visited the province to study its work.
In the meantime, the national housing department has referred 26 cases of fraud and corruption involving R126-million to the National Prosecuting Authority following a national forensic survey.
”We don’t hesitate to arrest our officials for wrongdoing,” said national housing spokesperson Mandla Mathebula. The forensic report, completed in March, identified 100 officials involved in irregularities. Those not referred for criminal prosecution are being dealt with through disciplinary proceedings.
Mathebula said a number of checks and balances, including site inspections, are now in place to ensure developers comply with construction standards and project mandates.