The registration will serve as part of an accreditation process to determine the eligibility of churches access to land and municipal facilities.
This decision was taken last year at the Religious Summit held in Germiston, in December.
At the Summit the religious leaders expressed their frustrations in acquiring land for their churches, and as a result four options were presented as proposed solutions.
These include leasing of schools owned by the department of education, leasing council-owned land, leasing and acquiring council-owned land as a long term solution and EMM to construct church precincts where space shall be shared by various churches on a rotational basis.
While the metro’s real estate department pursues these options, the health and social development department have established an accreditation process which will gather information on the churches that exist in the region.
The accreditation will provide the metro with information of whether a religious organisation meets the basic criteria for council-owned land.
“Accreditation of churches will ensure the optimisation of resources by streamlining processes that will also lead to proper land management and further ensure accountability,” said Themba Gadebe, spokesperson for Ekurhuleni Metro Municipality.
The accreditation database will also be used when engaging stakeholders such as the department of education.
ccording to Gadebe, accredited churches will distinguish themselves from non-accredited churches and will therefore have the advantaged of being eligible to obtain land through the bidding process.
Religious leaders can obtain and submit application forms for accreditation at Benoni Customer Care Area (CCA) offices.
The forms will be collected from the CCA by the health and social department, and feedback will be given to the applicants after the database has been formed.
The accreditation process started on September 11 and will run until October 10, 2014.
