Ekurhuleni on a drive to register churches

The registration will serve as part of an accreditation process to determine the eligibility of churches to access land and municipal facilities.

This stems from discussions which took place at the Religious Summit, held in Germiston, in December, last year.

At the summit, religious leaders articulated their difficulties in acquiring land for their churches and four options were presented as a proposed solution for these:

* Option 1: leasing of schools owned by Department of Education as a short term solution.

* Option 2: leasing of council-owned facilities as a short term solution.

* Option 3: leasing and acquiring of council-owned land as a long term solution.

* Option 4: EMM to construct church precincts, where space shall be shared by various churches on a rotational basis.

While the metro’s Real Estate Department pursues these options, the Health and Social Development Department has established an accreditation process, which serves to gather information on the churches that exist within the region.

Accreditation will provide the EMM with an indication of whether a religious formation meets the basic criteria to bid for council-owned land.

According to metro spokesperson Themba Gadebe, accreditation of churches will ensure the optimisation of resources by streamlining processes that will lead to proper land management and further ensure accountability.

The accreditation database will also be used when engaging with external stakeholders, such as the Department of Education, on the use of schools as places of worship.

Gadebe urged churches to apply to register and stated that accredited churches will distinguish themselves from non-accredited churches and will, therefore, have the advantage of being eligible to obtain land through the bidding process.

“The accredited churches will qualify to be prioritised for use of municipal facilities as a place of worship and the accreditation is free of charge,” he said.

Religious leaders can obtain and also submit application forms for accreditation at their nearest Customer Care Area (CCA) offices.

The forms will be collected from the CCA by the Health and Social Development Department and feedback will be given to the applicants after the database has been formed.

The accreditation process opened on September 11 and will run until October 10, 2014.