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Gauteng Department of Human Settlements MEC, Paul Mashatile must complete unfinished housing projects in Gauteng before jumping to spend billions of Rands on new mega housing projects.

The MEC has provided no timelines, no budgets and no commitment as to when the many unfinished provincial housing projects will be completed.

The DA has visited a number of these incomplete housing projects across the province and has discovered that these abandoned structures are in a dire state.

Some of the buildings must be demolished as they have crumbled, while some have been vandalized by angry residents who are desperate for houses and are tired of waiting on empty promises.

The failure to complete housing projects is a total waste of public funds that are meant to provide houses for our poor people.

The department currently has a housing backlog of 800 000 houses and intends to address this through 30 mega-residential developments spread across the five corridors in Gauteng.

Both Gauteng Premier, David Makhura and MEC Mashatile have recently unveiled two mega housing projects; the R35-billion John Dube City mega-project in Ekurhuleni which is expected to deliver over 10 000 houses and the Rand West Municipality Housing Project which will yield 13 000 units upon completion.

The ANC-led Gauteng administration cannot be trusted to deliver these houses as they have repeatedly failed to complete projects that they initiate.

Furthermore, there are some housing projects that have been completed and are still standing empty as they have not yet been handed over to the beneficiaries.

Jumping from one project to another without completing existing projects will not solve the provinces housing backlog, in fact it will only exasperate it.

We call upon MEC Mashatile and Premier David Makhura to be practical in their approach to building houses for our poor people. There should be proper plans, timelines and accurate lists of the beneficiaries.

We will continue to pressure both the MEC Mashatile and Premier Makhura to provide us with timelines on when unfinished projects will be completed and handed over to beneficiaries. We also demand that completed housing projects that are standing vacant be handed over to qualifying beneficiaries as soon as possible.

Issued by DA