Thandi Masango, an unemployed mother of six, wants her RDP house in Ext 22, which is being occupied by someone else.
Masango and her family are currently using her child support grants to rent another RDP house in Ext 18 known as Welas in eMbalenhle.
She applied for a RDP house 14 years ago and had been approved. She was informed that her house was built in Ext 22.
“I checked in 2008 if my house was completed, because I had been approved to benefit from a housing subsidy,” she said.
“I found that my house had been built, but that someone else was occupying it.
“I went to the Govan Mbeki Municipality’s housing department to ask what was happening. When they checked on the system, it was discovered that the house is still in my name.
“All these years I have been sent from pillar to post by the municipality, without any answers,” said Masango
She asked councillor Anita Mkhwebane two weeks ago for help.
The two women went to the municipality where a housing department official told them that the municipality was looking for another place to build a RDP house for Masango.
According to Masango, she asked the official what was wrong with her initial house in Ext 22, and she was told the Department of Human Settlements had financed the house in another person’s name before it was built.
“If I now get another RDP house in another place and stand that is not registered under my name, whose RDP house will I be occupying?
“Many RDP houses in extensions 22 and 10 here in eMbalenhle are occupied by people who are not the original title deed holders because some houses had been sold.
“I hope I’m not also a victim of this syndicate, because that will make my family and I suffer more. We don’t have our own residence that we can call home,” Masango said.
Mkhwebane said Masango and her family have been suffering for a long time because of alleged corruption.
She said there were many RDP houses that were occupied by questionable people, specifically in eMbalenhle.
“Mkhwebane visited the house in question.
“When I ask the occupier to explain how she got the house, she said that the key was given to her when she demanded a house for which she had been approved.
“She agreed that the house does not belong to her.”
Freddy Ngobe in the Mpumalanga Department of Human Settlement said according to the Housing Subsidy System, Masango had been approved in 2014 with no payment made for the house. This indicates that the house was never built.
Ngobe said their beneficiary management unit referred the matter to the Govan Mbeki Municipality so Masango can benefit from other housing projects within the municipality.
He said as a matter of policy, one cannot benefit twice from any government housing subsidy.
