The Greater Kliptown Development Project is well on track, the Gauteng department of housing said on Wednesday.
”The project has, however, not been without challenges.
”During the implementation, the project experienced delays brought about by the density of the informal settlement and the slow delivery by previous contractors, whose contracts have since been terminated,” the department said in a statement.
New contractors have been appointed and are expected to start work before the end of February.
The project is expected to deliver more than 5 700 reconstruction and development programme (RDP) houses for informal settlement dwellers.
To date 1 123 stands have been serviced and 866 houses constructed.
As part of the Kliptown development, there are different projects — Kliptown (RDP), Holomisa (Klipspruit) and the Kliptown Golf Course — each with a goal of contributing towards a sustainable and integrated development in Kliptown.
The Holomisa informal settlement will yield 562 houses, and this will include the redevelopment of the hostel and conversions of the ”two-rooms” to a house.
The Kliptown Golf Course will provide 930 units and 555 have been completed so far.
The first people to be moved to completed houses were those from the Fred Clarke and Chris Hani informal settlements.
This was done so that the area can be used for development of houses to accommodate others.
The department said another challenge identified in Kliptown is the fragmentation of community structures, which make it difficult to communicate the department’s plans to the people in the area.
The department recommended the re-establishment of the Kliptown Development Forum, which should be inclusive of all community structures in the area, to allow for effective communication between the department and the residents of Kliptown.
The past week has seen Kliptown residents complaining about housing, sanitation and electricity problems in the area.
”Children get sick because of the living conditions. When it rains we can’t sleep. When it’s hot the toilets stink,” Sipho Jantjie of the Kliptown Concerned Residents told reporters on a media tour last week.
Residents empty the pit toilets into the portable toilets because municipal workers insist they were told only to empty the portable toilets.
”For five days sewage sits in the toilets before the municipality cleans the toilets,” said Jantjie.
Sello Tladi, Johannesburg regional secretary of the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF), said: ”Houses are falling down. We were promised a better life, but this is a bitter life.”
Said Jantjie: ”The Freedom Charter was adopted in Kliptown in 1955. But within sight of the Freedom Charter monument, children play in between houses that are collapsing and rubbish that is swept back into people’s houses from the heaps next to the railway.” — Sapa