Neighbours' loos for hire

Some Khayelitsha residents have to pay up to R10 each time they want to use the toilets at their neighbours' homes because they don't have their own ablution facilities.

Residents in QQ Section in Site B, who live in shacks, fork out between 50c and R10 to their neighbours who live in formal houses.

In another section of the city's sprawling township, Site C, residents have to relieve themselves on a stretch of grass in full view of passing cars on the N2.

There are toilets nearby in Site C, but some of these are locked by individual residents who hold the keys, while others are broken, damaged or overflowing with human waste.

Using the stretch of grass as a toilet is dangerous: residents say that they are mugged as they walk to the area. One man was stabbed in the face and robbed of his cellphone earlier this year.

When the Cape Argus visited the area this week, human faeces littered the grassy area and the stench was overpowering.

It is not only adults who use the field as a toilet. Parents fear that their children are risking their lives.

Residents who use the area regularly said they had few options because the closest toilets were too far from their homes.

Some said they walked to a neighbouring area in Site C to use toilets provided by the City of Cape Town.

Thokoza Thulumani, who accompanied her two young daughters when they needed to use the grassy patch, said she "did not feel right" about using the field.

"Sometimes these little children want to run into the street (the N2); it's not safe for them," she said.

Mzimasi Kese, 31, said "having to go" in the open made him "feel bad".

"I don't feel right because so many people driving past in their cars can see you going."

Kese said sometimes people brought toilet paper while others used newspaper which they softened by rubbing.

There are 12 concrete flush toilets in Site C.

About six of these are locked and others have been vandalised or are blocked and have plumbing defects.

Nomfusi Jezile, who uses these toilets, said the keys to the locked toilets were kept by some residents and could be obtained when requested.

"It's better when they keep the keys because the toilets are cleaner and the children can't play in them," she said.

Ward councillor Nontsomi Billie said the city had the toilets for the area, but that there was no land on which to erect them.

She said some people in the area used the portable toilet system.

"If the toilets are not enough, they (the residents) should tell the street committee members who report it to me and I contact the city and processes are put in place," she said.

Residents in Site B's QQ section, who have been paying their neighbours in Q Section to use their outdoor toilets, said there were no toilets in QQ Section. They said they had been paying anything from 50c to R10 for about the past three years.

Steven Mhaga, who lives in QQ Section, said he always used the same toilet and regularly had to fork out 50c.

He said he had been told that the reason for the fee was to contribute to water and electricity.

QQ Section's Dumisani Jack also pays 50c.

"It becomes a problem sometimes because I don't always have money, or I can't get a toilet," he said.

Others said they were charged R10. The city's director for the Water and Sanitation Department, Philemon Mashoko, said the city had a monitoring and evaluation team conducting regular checks at all informal
settlements.

He said he was not able to comment on the legality of people renting out toilets. But he added that the city's Water and Sanitation Department would assess the situation. Mashoka said residents in Q Section and QQ Section had refused to accept "porta-potties because they were promised houses".

"The Water and Sanitation Department will investigate the possibility of providing temporary access to sanitation where the units will be placed on the periphery of the area due to availability of space," Mashoka said. Gavin Silber, the co-ordinator of the Social Justice Coalition, said the root of the toilet problem was the housing backlog.

The coalition's research showed that 500 000 people in Cape Town do not have access to basic sanitation. It is estimated that 50 000 people from others parts of the country stream into Cape Town each year, placing an even greater strain on the city's services.

Last year a report commissioned by the city's housing department showed that the backlog increased by 18 000 units each year.

Silber said that in the interim the city should do more to maintain the toilets. "The city needs to recognise its short-comings with sanitation; there needs to be better maintenance and monitoring." He said one the coalition members had been stabbed in May while using a field to relieve himself.

Mayor Dan Plato said the city could not meet the demand for services in informal settlements, citing a problem of "supply and demand".

He explained that in high-density shack settlements there was little room for essential services like access routes or space for toilets.

- Cape Argus

Land battle continues for backyard dwellers

More than 100 backyard dwellers from various townships slept in the open on a patch of private land in Philippi for the past two nights after the illegal structure they had built was demolished by law enforcement officials for the fourth time.

The land is situated off Stock Road between the R300 and the Joe Gqabi railway station.

The people, who hail from Gugulethu, Philippi and Khayelitsha, among other areas, claim they are entitled to the land because they paid for it by way of a beneficiary trust that was established in 1999.

Margret Gacula, who was a backyard dweller in Gugulethu, said the 853 members of the Vusintshutsha Beneficiary Trust had paid between R25 and R30 a week between 1999 and 2001 into a savings account and that uTshani Fund had bought the land on behalf of the trust in 2002.

"I want to know where the houses are that uTshani said they would build for us with the money we paid them," said Gacula.

Patrick Maghebula, the president of the national Federation of the Urban and Rural Poor, said uTshani had bought the plot on behalf of the SA Homeless People's Federation, which he said had defrauded its members.

"After the land was purchased, the leadership of the SAHPF told its members that uTshani no longer existed and that the transaction had fallen through," said Maghebula.

Patricia Matolengwe, a director of the SAHPF, said she was not prepared to respond to the allegations against the organisation.

"We will only talk to them through our lawyers," she said.

Steve Hayward, the head of Housing and Anti Land Invasion for the City of Cape Town, said there was a deed of sale proving that the land had been bought by the uTshani Fund but uTshani had told the City that nobody was authorised to occupy the land.

"We have been watching the site carefully," he said. "By law nobody can erect any structure, be it in Constantia or in this case in Philippi, without submitting the necessary building plans."

- Cape Argus

Cut in electricity subsidy for poor targeted

Cape Town mayor Dan Plato is to meet Public Enterprises Minster Barbara Hogan to discuss the city's subsidy to Eskom to provide free basic electricity to households, a subsidy that costs the city more than R100-million.

Plato said that, to be fair to all indigent electricity users in Cape Town, the mayoral committee had recommended to the council that the city amend its policy of subsidising Eskom to provide free basic electricity to users in the Eskom supply area of the city.

About one-third of consumers in the metropole, mainly in rural areas, Table View, Khayelitsha and Parklands, buy electricity directly from Eskom, and the rest buy through the city council.

"It is recommended that the city reduce its subsidy to Eskom to provide free basic electricity to Eskom customers who use less than 250 kilowatt hours per month, and not to those who use less than 450kW hours, as it used to do," said Plato.

He said he would meet Hogan to discuss the issue.

"I've asked her to intervene for funding to fill the gap," Plato said.

In the meantime, the city will continue to provide free basic electricity to its own customers who use less than 450kW hours a month.

Plato said Eskom had changed its tariff structure so that domestic customers using more than 150kWh a month were paying significantly less than the equivalent City of Cape Town customers.

"The city therefore needed to review its free basic electricity subsidy to Eskom, so that the city's subsidy to Eskom did not result in Eskom's customers paying less than the city's own customers," he said.

Mayoral committee member for finance Ian Neilson said that all municipalities in the country subsidised Eskom by about two cents per kilowatt.

"Those two cents might not seem like much, but it's around R120-million.

"And the city is one of Eskom's biggest customers and it should be subsidised," Neilson said.

The ANC's Raymond Mrawu said the city should charge a cheaper tariff for everyone.

"I don't know why the city doesn't change. Eskom is more sympathetic to the poorest of the poor.

"It's very important for the city to follow Eskom," Mrawu said.

Cynthia Clayton of the Independent Democrats said electricity had become so expensive that the meter boxes in homes in her area had become like televisions.

"People are watching their boxes more than TV. It's a total rip-off for the poor. We're actually going backwards," Clayton said.

The city's new system slots consumers into a tariff band according to the amount of electricity they buy.

The basic price of electricity increased by an average of 25 percent at the beginning of the month, but several consumers the Cape Times spoke to have found that their bills have increased by 60 to 70 percent.

A pensioner in Gordon's Bay found herself paying 93.31 cents per unit compared to 53.31 cents per unit before the tariff change.

"A unit is equal to 1 kilowatt-hour (kWh).

"I was told by the municipality that if you purchase more units than you normally use, you will be placed in a higher band," she said.

A man in Claremont found himself in a similar situation.

"I would urge all pre-paid users to check their new costs of power, mine increased from 61 cents per unit to 106 cents per unit, a far cry from the 25 to 35 percent announced," he said

"Energy has become more expensive than it used to be and people need to understand that the more they use, the more they will be charged.

"Free basic electricity is still there for lower users," Neilson said.

Neilson said people needed to change their lifestyles and make use of cost-saving measures.

Jolene Henn, Eskom's regional communication and stakeholder manager in the Western Cape, said that all those customers within its electricity supply areas consuming up to 450kWh per month did receive free basic electricity.

"Eskom's direct domestic customers pay less for electricity than the city's, depending on the tariff and consumption level," she said.

- Cape Times

Western Cape MEC slams housing waiting list

The Western Cape's provincial housing waiting list is as good as non-existent.

This is the view of Human Settlements MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela after the department finished assessing the housing data collection and management systems of 12 non-metro municipalities.

The investigation, which is part of the department's municipal housing demand data improvement programme, found that the systems used were so poor that duplication was common; information supplied by housing applicants could not be verified or checked for accuracy and completeness.

The assessment, the results of which have now been compiled in a report, also found that while municipal housing officials appeared to have adequate capacity to manage housing demand data and the related allocation of houses, municipalities used very basic systems and processes for handling housing registration data.

"This results in the integrity of data being dependent on the proper functioning of manual processes and controls," it said in the report.

These processes and controls had not been properly designed and there were few internal controls in place to ensure that, when selection occurred, the data could be relied on.

Key results for the 12 assessed local municipalities included that:

• Only five municipalities had a council-approved housing policy, another five were working according to a draft policy and two had no policy at all.
• Nine were using registration date to select beneficiaries; two were using a weighted point scale while one was using community profiling.
• In terms of Information Technology used, only two municipalities had an advanced system; three had a "progressed" system (able to control access to the data, but beneficiary selection is performed manually) and the remaining seven had basic systems (no access controls, all data related processes performed manually).
• The report also revealed that only one municipality had system-automated quality control to capture registration information; one other municipality used manual quality controls prior to capturing and the remaining 10 municipalities had no quality controls, meaning duplications and inaccuracies were captured.
• Only two municipalities stored and controlled access to their registration information; a further nine stored but did not control access to their registration data and one retained no documentation.
• Only the name, surname and ID number of applicants were consistently captured across all municipalities, while an address was captured against at least 80 percent of applicants in 11 out of 12 municipalities. The date was captured more than 80 percent of the time in nine out of 12 municipalities, while 50 to 80 percent in one and less than 50 percent in two.

"Considering that registration date is the most common basis for beneficiary selection, this is a concern," it said in the report.

The investigation also found that nearly 10 percent of records captured by the 12 municipalities were duplicates. Four municipalities had five percent or less duplicate records; three had 6-15 percent, four had 16-20 percent and one municipality had 25 percent of records duplicated.

Only six percent of applicants had an unknown application date; 20 percent were registered prior to 1998; 20 percent were registered between 1999 and 2002; while 54 percent have been registered since 2003.

Eighty percent of applicants' ID numbers were valid; two percent had no ID numbers; one percent were not South African residents and the rest had invalid ID numbers.

Madikizela said the findings confirmed the problems he had raised about housing allocation.

"It is fundamentally flawed."

He said loopholes allowed people to get houses when they should not.

- Cape Argus

W Cape improves housing demand

Cape Town - The Western Cape government is working on an improved system to ensure that the right people benefit from municipal housing, the province's human settlements department said on Thursday.

The department had completed an assessment of the first 12 non-metro municipalities' housing demand data collection and management systems and practices, it said.

While municipal housing officials were able to manage housing demand data and the allocation of houses, the biggest concern was the use of systems and processes for handling housing registration data.

This resulted in the "integrity" of the data being dependent on the proper functioning of manual processes and controls, it said.

Processes and controls

The assessment was part of the department's Municipal Housing Demand Data Improvement Programme.

"Currently, these processes and controls have not been properly designed, agreed and implemented.

"There are few internal controls in place in order to ensure that, when selection occurs, the data can be relied on."

It said that information collected from potential beneficiaries was not being checked for validity, accuracy and completeness.

This meant that there was insufficient information with which to select those who should benefit from municipal housing.

Out of the 12 municipalities assessed, five had a council approved housing beneficiary selection process, five were working according to a draft policy and two had no policies.

In terms of selecting beneficiaries nine municipalities were using registration date order, two were using a weighted point scale and one was using community profiling, it said.

Only name, surname and ID number of applicants were consistently captured across all municipalities, while an address was captured against at least 80% of applicants in 11 out of 12 municipalities.

A date was captured more than 80% of the time in nine out of 12 municipalities, 50 to 80% in one, and less than 50% in two, the department said.

Registration date

"Considering that registration date is the most common basis for beneficiary selection, this is a concern, it said.

"The same applied to other important fields, which may influence whether the applicant qualifies, such as number and details of dependants, marital status, spouse details and income."

A survey of only half of the non-metro municipalities showed that the department needed to develop a support strategy to improve the housing demand data management by municipalities, it said.

In addition, it would develop a standard job description for housing officials to assist municipalities to indicate roles and responsibilities.

Workshops would also be conducted to discuss and agree on the requirements for a standard municipal housing policy.

The department said an assessment of the remaining 12 municipalities outside the City of Cape Town would be completed by the end of next month.

- SAPA

Project to improve 230 RDP houses

A TOTAL of 230 RDP houses in the Mamre area will be retrofitted with ceilings to help residents cut down heating costs, the City of Cape Town said yesterday.

This would improve the quality of life and provide jobs for unemployed Mamre residents, mayoral committee member for housing Shehaam Sims said.

"There are thousands of houses in Cape Town which were built before the National Housing Subsidy allowed for the inclusion of ceilings. A house without a ceiling falls far short of the ideal thermal protection one would like to see in every house."

Retrofitting houses with insulated ceilings improved energy efficiency, health and livelihoods.

The project was being driven by the city's environmental resources management department as part of the Danish Development Aid-funded Urban Environmental Management Programme.

The city said 65percent of the 230 houses had already been retrofitted with insulated ceilings. By the end of the year all the identified houses would be completed. The project had also created jobs for 18 locals.

Western Cape finance and economic development MEC Alan Winde said he would investigate whether Expanded Public Works Programme funding could be made available so the programme may be extended in the province. - Sowetan

Acting housing CEO paid R4m

A government housing company has paid its acting chief executive officer a R2.1-million bonus on top of his R2.2m salary.

Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale revealed in a written parliamentary reply that Servcon Housing Solutions had, during the 2008/09 financial year, paid out more than R1m in a performance bonus and R1.1m as a retention bonus to acting CEO, Lindikhaya Mpambani.

Servcon is a Human Settlements Department entity that deals with the registration and verification of state property.

The Daily News was unable to reach Mpambani for comment.

Sexwale said all Servcon employees had received a retention bonus during the 2008/09 financial year, but all the payments were approved by the company's board remuneration committee.

The minister did not say how much the other employees received.

In May, former public works director-general, Manye Moroka, was grilled by Parliament's spending watchdog over a potential conflict of interest after he awarded Servcon and another state company, Intersite, a tender of R223m while he was a board member of Servcon.

Moroka disagreed with MPs that there was a conflict of interest in awarding the contract.

The standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) also questioned the R215 000 bonus Moroka got from Servcon even though he had left the company and started working as public works director-general.

Moroka said he had invested the bonus.

After joining the government, Moroka continued to serve on Servcon's board and chaired its remuneration committee.

He also told MPs that he had recommended to then public works minister, Thoko Didiza, and provincial MECs that Servcon be given the tender.

Former public works director-general, Sam Vukela, told Scopa that the department had paid Servcon R7.6m and Intersite R2.8m for work done so far.

The two companies were given contracts to audit all state assets across the country.

Moroka quit as public works director-general late last year after fighting with Public Works Minister Geoff Doidge over the R215 000 bonus.

Doidge accused Moroka of awarding the contract without following tender procedures. Moroka admitted to Scopa that there was no budget for the R223m tender.

- Daily News

W Cape government alarmed by townships’ growth

Some NGO’s and the Western Cape government have expressed concern over the rate at which some informal settlements are expanding.

The group Abahlali Basemjondolo said the steady growth in townships is fuelling the struggle for service delivery.

Some squatter camps are growing by ten percent every year.

Meanwhile, the provincial Human Settlements Department has admitted it is struggling to meet the rising demand for formal homes.

Residents of Zwelitsha Enkaznini informal settlement in Khayelitsha told Eyewitness News they notice new shacks almost weekly.

With more people moving into the area the struggle for already scarce services intensifies.

People are forced to queue for water as there are reportedly only five working taps in the township.

Housing activist, Mthobeli Qona showed Eyewitness News a dumping ground of sorts which is also used as impromptu toilet facilities.

But some have become entrepreneurs, selling corrugated iron to shack dwellers. Other homeowners bordering the settlement charge people to use their toilets.

- Eyewitness News

2000 subsidised houses in new development

Thousands of families who have been on the City of Cape Town's housing waiting list for years would get first pick if subsidised homes are built on a piece of land valued at R70-million near Zeekoevlei.

The city has proposed that about 2,000 subsidised houses be built on the land between the vlei and Pelican Park and that the development be integrated with that of 1,000 houses designed for the market and a strip of mixed-use properties.

Subsidies provided in line with the National Housing Subsidy Scheme would be used for the 2,000 homes, while a developer would fund the rest of the development.

The developer would also build the subsidised homes and be required to contribute funds for these to ensure they were of a quality that would not compromise the value of the homes built for the market.

The 80 hectares of land earmarked for phase one of the development lie between Strandfontein Road and Zeekoevlei, and between Pelican Park and Eagle Park.

During the environmental impact assessment phase, environmentalists expressed concern about the city's proposal to develop the eastern shore of Zeekoevlei, one of the most highly sensitive areas in Cape Town.

The land has been valued at R70 million or R825,000 a hectare. Most of it is covered in dense Port Jackson and gum trees.

Peter Oscroft, the project co-ordinator, said the plan had been a long time coming and the mayoral committee had agreed about two years ago that the subsidised homes be allocated to people living within the subcouncil's borders.

"(Mayco) agreed that 70 percent of opportunities would be offered to the people from that sub-council and who had been on the waiting list the longest, and 30 percent to people who qualified and were on the waiting list in other parts of the metro," Oscroft said.

The city would invite proposals for the development of the "total package" - the subsidised homes as well as those designed for the market and the mixed-use properties.

Prospective developers would be required to include in their tenders a price offer for the land to be used for the market components.

The developer whose tender was accepted would be required to buy from the city and take transfer of the section of land destined for the homes and properties to be marketed.

The land earmarked for subsidised homes would be transferred to people who qualified for subsidies.

Oscroft said the city had compiled a list of 3,000 people who had been on the housing waiting list longest.

To protect the value of the neighbouring properties, the city would require, as a condition of the development agreement, that the developer contribute funds for the subsidised homes to ensure they were of a better quality than the standard subsidy home.

Oscroft said a number of residents in neighbouring areas had expressed concern about the effect the development would have on the value of their homes.

"During the public participation process there was as strong message," Oscroft said.

"People were concerned about the value of their properties being lowered by the development.

"The developer can improve the quality and allay people's fears."

Because it was undeveloped and infested with invasive Port Jackson, the land was "extremely vulnerable to illegal occupation, use as a refuge and cover for criminal activity, illegal dumping and fires".

"All of these risks will be minimised as the land is developed and occupied," the city housing department has said.

- Cape Times

Migration affects delivery! FACE IT!

HUNDREDS of thousands of people have left the Eastern Cape for greener pastures since 2006 in what is the country’s largest migration from a single province during this time.

And statistics show that between 2006 and 2011, the province will have lost a number of people equivalent to about twice the population of King William’s Town.

Poor job prospects and recessionary blues have been blamed for the recent flood of people leaving the Eastern Cape, although population figures released by Statistics SA this week show the province has been bleeding people at a steady rate for the last decade.

“Teachers, and health professionals, the skilled and professionally mobile, would not want to work in the old Transkei and Ciskei areas,” Rhodes University economist David Fryer said yesterday.

Although the actual population of the province has increased to just over 6.7 million, it’s the migration figures – with more people leaving than arriving – that are troubling.

Fryer said that while the private sector might not be hit as hard, parastatals like Telkom and Eskom, and small municipalities, were finding it hard to keep skilled workers.

“The brain drain is due to working conditions, especially in the areas that have fallen behind; the remote areas where services have collapsed,” he said.

Young professionals have also flowed from the province, in search of better job opportunities and what they perceive as better standards of living elsewhere.

The Western Cape is the most favoured destination for Eastern Cape migrants, followed by Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

Cape Town Woolworths logistics officer Sikelelwa Silwana said that when she moved from East London five years ago it had been because of a better financial offer.

“I chose this job over an offer in East London because it offered me a better salary,” she said.

Others said they had left the province in the last couple of years as the recession started to hit.

Zoleka Blayi, who works in a retail store in Pretoria, left a job in Mthatha. “I didn’t want to stick around until I got retrenched, so I ventured into Gauteng and landed myself a job within a month.”

According to Johannesburg statistician Lize Snyman, the trend is set to continue.

“Employment hasn’t been growing much, so the outward migration from rural provinces like the Eastern Cape is set to continue.”

National furniture removal companies also confirmed the province’s outward flow, saying Gauteng was the preferred destination, with the Western Cape and KwaZulu- Natal following closely .

Southernwood’s Brillen Business Solutions, which also offers furniture removal services, said professionals cited better job opportunities as the reason for leaving.

“I have moved doctors and engineers to KZN and Gauteng, and the numbers have only increased,” owner Allan Samaita said.

At Port Elizabeth’s Sinethemba Removals, sales manager Nokwanda Mbanqolo said their figures had climbed steadily over the past year, with a 20% increase in removal requests to other provinces from December last year to March.

“It’s more the professionals who are leaving, and they claim to have found better jobs, or are unemployed and are hoping for luck in other cities, like Cape Town,” she said.

Stuttafords Van Lines in East London said their customers moved in the direction of Cape Town, which, branch manager Anton Harris said, had always been the preferred destination. “We can only put it down to people chasing money,” he said.

According to Stats SA figures, only 13.5% of the country’s 49.99million people live in the Eastern Cape, down from 14.3 percent in 2001. Figures show that between 2006 and 2011, 211600 people overall would have migrated from the province, more than twice the estimated 100000 population website Wikipedia says King William’s Town has. — Daily Dispatch