R61 million needed to fix only half of houses in KaNyamazane
The houses were damaged by a hail storm in May and the are was declared as a disaster area in September.
KANYAMAZANE – It will cost more than R61 million to fix only half of the houses damaged by a hailstorm in May.
This is considerably more than the R19 million made available to the Department of Human Settlements for repairing the 2 130 storm-damaged houses.
The houses’ roofs suffered severe damage during the hailstorm. After violent protests broke out in August, Refilwe Mtshweni declared it a disaster area.
The Department of Human Settlements was then allocated its R19 million budget for disasters to fixing the houses.
Department spokesman, Freddy Ngobe, said on Wednesday that their initial
R19 million budget has already been spent on fixing 574 houses.
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According to him, a total of R61 million will be needed to fix the 1 050 houses which were most affected.
The first deadline to have all the houses fixed was set by Mtshweni as September 19. This deadline was missed, and on October 12 she said in a press release that “despite having more work to complete, we are hopeful that with the addition of contractors on the ground we should be able to meet our target by December”.
Twelve additional contractors were appointed to complete the project, for a total of 15 contractors in the area.
“The contractors and department remain committed and are working tirelessly to ensure that the houses are rehabilitated and adhere to the premier’s deadline,” Ngobe said.
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He said that they were still awaiting positive feedback from the national Department of Human Settlements, and other sources of additional funding are being explored.
“However, the department has so far been able to continue with the work at hand by prioritising all severely affected houses,” Ngobe said.
He did not comment on how much it would cost to complete the whole project, but he previously told Lowvelder that they have applied for an additional R119 million from the national department.
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