THE City of Ekurhuleni has adopted a programme called re-blocking, which will see informal settlements turned into livable human areas.
“We have 119 informal settlements in our area and have a responsibility to ensure that the living conditions of our people living in these areas improve,” said Ekurhuleni executive mayor, Clr Mondli Gungubele.
“After carefully assessing the situation we discovered that, with such a huge housing backlog, we must find a way of making these areas livable, and the answer was re-blocking.”
Re-blocking is a process of re-configuring the current layout of informal settlements and re-organising the ground plan in such a manner as to optimally utilise space to promote the health, safety and well-being of households, with particular focus on promoting accelerated service delivery to informal settlements, he added.
The city believes that, through this programme, there will be an integrated urban structure; a safer integrated public realm; improved access for emergency vehicles; safer and convenient paths for pedestrians; open spaces for community facilities and better access to municipal services.
“We are in the process of doing occupancy audits of all our informal settlements. This will enable us to understand how many informal structures we have and how we should restructure them so we could provide key essential services.”
“Already, all our informal settlements receive basic services such as clean water, sanitation, waste management, access roads and high mast lighting.”
Winnie Mandela informal settlement in Tembisa, and Ekuthuleni in KwaThema are the first to be targeted, with audits already being undertaken and electricity being rolled out.
In responding to the housing backlog, Gungubele said the city had adopted a densification policy. This involves the creation of high rise human settlements well located within public transport corridors for easy movement between work and home, and in locations where there is access to opportunities, networks, capabilities and facilities that can support various types of livelihoods.
“High-rise buildings will allow us to optimise the number of houses produced per development. These developments include fully-subsidised units, rental
stock and bond units for people earning between R3 500 and R18 000 per annum,” Gungubele said.
As part of this programme, 250 units are already under construction at the Dellville and fire station areas in Germiston.
Meanwhile, on June 3, the mayor, together with the member of the mayoral committee (MMC) for human settlement, Clr Aubrey Nxumalo, handed over 101 new houses and over 700 title deeds to residents of Chief Albert Luthuli Park in Benoni.
