Brickvale Housing development: Overall project now costs almost R1 billion
Challenges ranged from funding shortfalls, Covid-19 lockdown regulations restricting the workflow, and late payments to service providers, but the phased construction is now back on track, MCLM says.
The Brickvale Housing development has been a topic of controversy for a number of years. The Mogale City Local Municipality’s Executive Mayor Councillor Tyrone Gray visited the development recently to see to it that work will continue as planned.
The municipality’s head of communications, Adrian Amod said in a statement that after years of snail’s pace progress which was coupled with months of no construction work being done, this much-debated housing project has finally seen some visible progress over the last couple of months.
Challenges ranged from funding shortfalls, Covid-19 lockdown regulations restricting the workflow, and late payments to service providers, but the phased construction is now back on track. All the challenges have been dealt with by the municipality’s leadership, according to the statement.
To monitor the progress after construction had resumed, the municipality’s management conducted the site inspection on Tuesday, July 19.
The site inspection is an ongoing measure not only to hold all role players including Mogale City’s Human Settlements team and contractors accountable, but also to ensure that work is commensurate with milestone payments made on the project,” read the statement.
It is important for the purposes of transparency to mention that the low-cost housing project was initially allocated a budget of R834 million, according to the statement. This was to cover the water and sewer, electricity, roads and storm water as well as construction and other related professional fees.
“Given annual revised calculations due to building material and related services increases as well as other challenges impacting on the overall project costs, the project is almost at R1 billion.”
During the inspection on day 281 it was found that the 40 square metre homes were 80% complete and would be ready for occupation at the end of September. Another approximately 300 homes are expected to be completed in the first half of 2023.
Beneficiaries for the homes are residents from Norman 1 and 2 informal settlement in Tarlton, Matselapad, Makhulugama and Tudor Shaft.”
