Management of the Rand West City Local Municipality (RWCLM) issued 543 title deeds to property owners in Rand West City between October 2019 and March 2022.
Also read: Family waits more than 30 years for title deed
Commemorating Human Rights in March, Executive Mayor of RWCLM, Councillor Gladys Khoza and her entourage visited four areas to hand out long-awaited title deeds to property owners in Mohlakeng, Bekkersdal, Kocksoord and Toekomsrus.
In her speech on Tuesday 29 March at the Toekomsrus Community Hall, Khoza said one of the basic human rights in South Africa is shelter, which will give people dignity and their freedom.
“As the government, we’re saying that we want to take care of you because you’ve been waiting for these title deeds for such as long time. We apologise for delaying on what was due to you,” Khoza said.
The mayor pleaded with the property owners to seek assistance from the municipality directly should they encounter any difficulties regarding their municipal accounts. That would help avoid adding to the backlog of challenges that the municipality was facing, such as non-payment or simply a failure to comply with municipal by-laws.
We’d appreciate it if you came to us, even if it means you come straight to my office. We’ll help you because we can’t have a community that’s not paying for services; there’s lack of general maintenance because people don’t pay for services,” Khoza said.
Executive Mayor of the West Rand District Municipality (WRDM), Hullet Hild also pleaded with residents to make sure they made payment arrangements with the municipality to help prevent more complications.
“Please come to us and discuss the issues so that we can move forward, because if you’re just sitting at home with those issues they won’t be resolved,” Hild added.
Also read: The Good, the bad and the ugly of the WRDM Mayor’s maiden State of the District Address
Bruce Nimmerhoudt, MMC for Human Settlement in the Rand West City Local Municipality said the municipality would continue to make sure that outstanding title deeds were issued to the rightful owners, as well as those that still needed to be processed.
We’re going to visit many households and see how we can expedite the process so that people become lawful owners of their houses and have their dignity restored,” Nimmerhoudt said.
