The City of Ekurhuleni is changing the face of informal settlements.
It has adopted a programme called Reblocking, which will see informal settlements turned into liveable human areas.
“After carefully assessing the situation we discovered that, with such a huge housing backlog, we must find a way of making these areas liveable – and the answer was Reblocking,” said Ekurhuleni mayor Clr Mondli Gungubele.
Ekurhuleni is home to 119 informal settlements.
Reblocking is a process of reconfiguring the current layout of informal settlements and reorganising the ground plan in such a manner as to optimally utilise space to promote the health, safety and well-being of households, with a particular focus on promoting accelerated service delivery.
The city believes that, through this programme, there will be an integrated urban structure, a safer integrated public realm, improved access for emergency vehicles, safer and convenient paths for movement of pedestrians, open spaces for essential community facilities and broadened access to municipal services.
“We are now in the process of doing occupancy audits of all our informal settlements,” Gungubele said.
“This will enable us to understand how many informal structures we have and how we should restructure them so that we could provide key essential services.
“Already all our informal settlements receive basic services such as clean water, sanitation, waste management, access roads and high mast lighting – but we are now seeing what more we can do while they wait to be relocated to formal areas someday.”
He revealed that the Winnie Mandela informal settlement in Tembisa, and Ekuthuleni informal settlement in KwaThema, are the first to be targeted.
An audit has already been undertaken and electricity is being rolled out.
In responding to the housing backlog, Gungubele explained that Ekurhuleni has adopted the densification policy, which involves the creation of high-rise human settlements, located well within public transport corridors for easy movement between work and home, and in locations where there is access to opportunities, networks, capabilities and facilities that can support various types of livelihoods.
“This is why we are now doing high-rise buildings, which will allow us to optimise the number of houses produced per development,” he said.
“These developments include fully-subsidised units, rental stock and bond units of people earning between R3 500 and R18 000 per annum.”
As part of this programme, 250 units are already under construction at the Delville and Fire Station areas in Germiston.
Meanwhile, the mayor, together with the member of the Mayoral Committee for Human Settlements, Clr Aubrey Nxumalo, handed over 101 brand new houses and over 700 title deeds to residents of Chief Albert Luthuli Park, in Benoni, on Friday, last week.
