Housing

Remedial Housing Policy

The Department of Human Settlements presented the draft Remedial Policy for Housing to legislators. In 2014, the Minister announced that it was her intention to scrap the rectification programme and ensure that the onus is on each and every contractor to build properly or return to repair. She noted that R2 billion had been spent fixing thousands of houses that were substandard and uninhabitable as a result of poor workmanship by contractors. This means that the money currently directed to rectification will be used in building houses for people who have been waiting for houses. The rectification programme was only meant to cover houses that were built before the National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC) was established. In 2015, the Minister issued a directive to put this into effect and a new plan was developed. The administration of this programme has been turned over to the NHBRC, which has to identify the contractor and ensure that they rectify the shoddy work. A Statistics SA survey conducted between 2002 and 2010 revealed that 31% of RDP beneficiaries regarded their houses as substandard and uninhabitable. A subsequent national survey in 2011 found that 17% of RDP owners complained about the walls and 18% about the roof. A “self-help” approach underpins the draft policy whereby those who received government-issued houses are encouraged to fix them as part of maintaining the houses. Help will still be rendered to certain categories of people, such as the indigent, pensioners and the disabled. Importantly, a national register of contractors is to be kept so that work can be monitored and action can be taken against contractors who do not comply with standards. This includes blacklisting companies. MPs maintained that companies should be accountable for the quality of work they produced but were concerned about how payment would be recovered from those that had disappeared or were liquidated. Another worry was that the policy was seeking to only rectify houses built before 2011, and not after that period. They sought greater clarity about blacklisting – who will be held accountable and the process this will entail.