Pretoria - North West MEC for Human Settlements, Public Safety & Liaison, Desbo Mohono, has condemned the destruction of property during protests, saying they were counterproductive to service delivery.
This comes after a community hall in Logageng village in the Ratlou local municipality was torched during a protest over an abandoned housing development project, water, electricity and roads.
"We condemn in the strongest terms acts of criminality that are an affront to our democracy. However, the department will do everything possible to speed up intervention on the abandoned housing project in order to restore the situation to normality," said Mohono.
The provincial Human Settlements Department is considering terminating an R84-million rural housing development agreement with Ratlou local municipality to build 2 000 housing units in Madibogo, Disaneng, Makgobistad and Logageng villages.
The department said terminating the agreement will allow it to fix poor workmanship and incomplete structures in Logageng and Madibogo, and speed up the completion of the remaining housing units in Disaneng.
"The contractor appointed by the municipality for the project, Mosa Projects, has struggled for some time to register satisfactory progress in these villages due to shoddy work, though it completed 400 units in Makgobistad," said the department.
In Logageng, where 200 housing units were to be built, the contractor abandoned the site after building about 63 wall plates. Although Mosa Projects were instructed to go back to the site to fix the structures it had built, they have not done so.
An audit of the project had recommended that the development agreement with the municipality be terminated, and have the department take over the project. Efforts will now be made to recoup money from the contractor to complete outstanding work that needs to be done on the project.
