Mayor visits Cornubia Christmas homes
On Wednesday Mayor James Nxumalo visited hundreds of people at The Cornubia Integrated Development, who received the keys to their new homes a few days before Christmas.
ETHEKWINI Municipality Mayor, James Nxumalo, spent the morning at The Cornubia Integrated Development outside of Mount Edgecombe, where he and members of the Executive Committee took part in a ‘walk-about’, visiting some of the newest homeowners at the site.
During his visit Nxumalo inspected some of the houses that has been built as part of the Phase 1B project. By completion of the phase 2 186 homes will have been built.
On 20 December 101 families, who were moved from the Polokwane Transit Camp and Hammonds Farm in Durban, were able to move into the completed homes as they were officially handed their keys.
However, as Phase 1B is not yet complete, it posed some problems. While the completed homes have running water, some of the new occupants have reported leakages within the homes as well as underground leakage’s and sewer spillages.
What’s more the residents are still waiting for power connections. During the mayor’s visit the poles for the power cables were being erected.
However, the mayor seemed unfased by the ‘setbacks’ as he addressed the crowd. According to Nxumalo the city prioritised the housing of the residents so that they could be removed from the slums for Christmas.
“I am very happy with the progress of the project. There is lots of excitement from the community although they are still waiting for electricity to be made available to them. In a nutshell, they are here and living in the beautiful free houses and have been removed from their once terrible living conditions,” he said.
Nxumalo said the paving of the verges and tarring of the roads would be completed within the New Year as most contractors are on leave for the festive season.
When asked about the leakages Nxumalo said, “those things happen. As people begin to occupy the houses we will begin to detect the issues and I am confident that they will be sorted very soon,” he said.
During the address the mayor also urged to community not to sell their houses as the homes ‘belong to them, their children and their great grandchildren’.
“These houses are not for sale nor are people allowed to rent them. People might sell them for R5 000 or R10 000 only to find themselves back in the slums in a few years to come. This is not acceptable. We urged the recipients to take care, protect and enjoy their homes,” he said.
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