Cape Town - Opposition parties on Wednesday rejected the Western Cape Human Settlements budget and blamed the ever-increasing provincial housing database backlog on the Province.
The parties were reacting to Human Settlements MEC Tertuis Simmers’s budget allocation of R2.4 billion and his promise to deliver 11 210 housing opportunities consisting of 2 747 sites and 8 463 top structures during the 2022/23 financial year.
Last year the department’s budget promised to deliver 14 596 housing opportunities consisting of 6 324 serviced sites and 8 272 units.
Simmers said: “The small drop in the number of sites must be viewed in the context that a majority of our projects are continued from previous years, and that bulk infrastructure is an inhibiting factor with new projects.”
He also said that this year the department planned to hand over 10 150 title deeds despite the national government having stopped the Title Deed Restoration Grant.
EFF MPL Nosipho Makamba-Botya questioned the veracity of the claims to dish out more title deeds. “Who are these beneficiaries when our people continue to be landless?”
She said the people of Dunoon and Kosovo had been promised a move to less congested parcels of land since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“If the provision of housing in the province continues to move at a snail’s pace, people will continue to lose hope in this DA-led government and continue to occupy open lands.”
On spatial integration, GOOD Party MPL Shaun August said the Province had done everything in its power to ensure that the city remains inaccessible to citizens that would greatly benefit from low-cost inner-city housing.
“It is under this very government that Cape Town has been named the most unequal city in the world and it is this very government who decides to further gentrify the city centre by pushing poor people of colour to the furthest ends of Cape Town.”
ANC MPL Andile Lili said: “The DA must stop complaining about cuts from the national government and start delivering integrated human settlements to our people.”
The DA majority in the legislature ensured that the budget was passed.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za