MMC for housing in the City of Johannesburg, Mlungisi Mabaso says his department is ready to tackle some of the long standing issues faced by Human Settlements in the densely populated city.
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Mabaso was reappointed for his second term in office last year under the multi-party coalition government.
Speaking during an interview with Urban News, Mabaso said the issuing of long-awaited title deeds to beneficiaries remained a top priority for his department.
The city of Johannesburg currently has a backlog of over 20 000 title deeds which have not been issued dating back to 1994.
Mabaso said as part of the housing obligations to addressing the backlog, his office is working on introduce programmes which will ensure that title deeds are given to the rightful beneficiaries across the city.
“The option that we are trying to explore is establishing a title deed tribunal where we will be dealing with these disputes and engaging with the masters of high court.
“We can’t do that if we do not have a formal structure,” he said.
The MMC also spoke about the city’s plan to invest more funds in the inner city, with projects set to focus on creating affordable housing developments within the CBD.
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This will include, for the first time the constructing of RDP houses within the city and introduction of mega projects that will ensure that the department is able to roll out more housing units per financial year.
“Currently in the planning phase, we want to put more focus on the inner city. In the upcoming financial year, starting from this coming Sunday, the old Gazini Transnet building will be demolished for the purposes of mixed development, referring to the construction of RDP houses, low cost social houses and other typology that are available in the market,” said Mabaso.
The Department currently delivers less than 3000 units per financial year.
Through projects such as Hotrand, the Department wants to increase units and give houses to more than 5000 beneficiaries per financial year.
Mabaso added that the biggest challenge faced by Housing was the insufficient resources to meet the expectations of citizens.
He said the lack of resources meant a delay in the service delivery as they are unable to assist communities.
“The Department is planning in consultation with the mayor to host the housing indaba.
“We want to invite the private sector and all key stakeholders and engage on how to deal with these human settlement challenges,” he concluded.
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Speaking on land invasions, Mabaso said his office has been working with police officials to clamp down on syndicates that are selling land to poor and vulnerable people.
“Criminals are behind that, there is a huge syndicate of people that are illegally selling stands. You will find all these open spaces illegally occupied and you will go and evict them, they will tell you that they have bought the stands,” concluded MMC Mabaso.
