On Wednesday, July 28 a virtual meeting was held to discuss the formalising of the Rugby Club informal settlement as part of the Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme (UISP).
The meeting was hosted by Ward 70 councillor, Caleb Finn and City of Johannesburg Assistant Director of Housing, Thembakazi Gwarubana. They were joined by a number of CoJ Housing representatives as well as more than 60 members of the community.
In Thembakazi’s presentation, she discussed the project and how they aim to achieve the objective.
“The national government’s objective is to intensify its effort to upgrade informal settlements in partnership with communities. To achieve this objective we introduced a new window with specific conditions,” she said.
These conditions are as follows:
• To serve as a planning and preparatory platform for the introduction of a new informal settlement grant in 2020/ 2021 (Upgrading Informal Settlements Grant)
• To use a partnership approach that promotes community ownership and participation in the upgrades
• To provide tenure rights to households living in informal settlements
• To ensure the provision of healthy and secure living environments for households living in informal settlements
• To ensure empowerment through facilitating community partnership and participation in the development of settlements
She also discussed a few of the window’s outputs such as the city-wide informal settlements upgrading strategy, upgrading plans and social compacts concluded with communities, informal settlements provided with interim and permanent municipal engineering services (public lighting, roads, storm water, refuse removal and bulk connections for water, sanitation and electricity) to name just a few.
“Furthermore a comprehensive and updated geo-referenced dataset of all informal settlements in the CoJ metro, including their location, names, size, and estimated number of structures was compiled – a total of 191,” explained Thembakazi.
The settlements were also categorised, in terms of NUSP (National Upgrading Support Programme) categorisation which were explained in her presentation. Rugby Club was categorised as a B1 informal settlement which means it is developable and appropriate for long-term upgrading.
According to Thembakazi, B2B Consulting was appointed to implement phase 1 of the UISP to develop the following:
• A community social compact
• Confirmation of informal settlement upgrading plan, sustainable livelihood plan, and socioeconomic survey with the community
• Draft layout plan
• Interim services designs
She also discussed their progress since August last year.
“A total of 1 033 households were surveyed in December last year. Re-blocking and de-densification commenced in June this year. The interim services programme will provide a mix of the basic services such as basic water and sanitation facilities, road and storm water network, electricity connections and solid-waste containment,” she explained.
Johannesburg Water and City Power are currently on site providing standpipes and electricity connections to the newly upgraded sites. After the presentation, a Q&A session was held to ensure all questions were answered.
