Human Settlements Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu, says government has made R4.6bn available for housing in Nelson Mandela Bay.
She was in the Metro on Monday to meet representatives of the National African Chamber of Commerce and SMME contractors, many of whom have complained about not getting contracts and also not being paid on time.
Speaking to the media Minister Sisulu said that the R4.6bn will be spent over the Medium Term Expenditure Framework.
She said her Department, at the request of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro, will be taking over the housing delivery programme in the Metro.
Sisulu said that part of the intervention is to merge those contractors who have contracts with the Province and the Housing Development Agency under one umbrella, being the HDA.
"We do this because we were requested by the full Council and councillors to take over the responsibility of Human Settlements because the administration around it had completely weakened and fallen away. And, the tragedy around this is that Human Settlements in Nelson Mandela was quite advanced and the Metro was regarded one of the best deliverers of Human Settlements," said Sisulu.
She also offered the following assurances to contractors who have dealings with the Municipality, the Province and the Housing Development Agency.
"We want to assure them that their contracts are safe, that all those legally binding documents that we have that set out what they are going to do will still be done. It's just that we would like to introduce them to a new environment now which is the HDA," said Sisulu.
She said the Housing Development Agency is an agency of government and its job is to do "exactly what it is doing now, intervene when municipalities do not have the capacity to do it themselves, and we're trying it out in Port Elizabeth."
