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Knysna Municipality issued the following statement after scooping another provincial award.
Knysna Municipality was announced winner in the category "Best Enhanced People's Housing Process Project" and achieved the second runner up position in the category "Upgrading of Informal Settlements Project" for its Vision 2002 project, at the 2014 Govan Mbeki Human Settlements Awards ceremony held in Cape Town on Tuesday, 27 May 2014.
This is the third time Knysna Municipality receives this highly prestigious acknowledgement, since the inception of the Govan Mbeki Human Settlements Awards in 2008.
These housing awards, named after Govan Mbeki, recognise and celebrate excellence in the delivery of quality, sustainable human settlements.
According to municipal manager Lauren Waring, the focus of housing delivery in Knysna has shifted from simply providing houses to raising dignity, building integrated communities and creating opportunities for local entrepreneurs.
"These opportunities culminated into two new awards for Knysna Municipality when Inyameko Trading 618cc owned by Thelma Kameni was awarded runner up as the best provincial woman contractor. Winner in the best youth contractor category was awarded to Bevan Plaatjies. These awards highlight the focus that Knysna Municipality places supporting the emerging contractors in the town, as well as our approach to developing and implementing new and exciting initiatives which will help us to create a town where our people can prosper and live in dignity."
"The majority of the informal settlements are situated adjacent to the N2 access into town, Ms Waring added. The terrain is difficult to develop with steep slopes and poor soil conditions. "This has resulted in extraordinary measures having to be taken to protect services and houses. Measures that need to be implemented include rock filling for roads, paving of roads in steep areas, retaining walls, drainage and slope stabilisation."
Despite these challenges the municipality still managed to deliver over 3 500 Breaking New Ground (BNG) serviced sites and over 1 800 housing units through the different housing programmes available during the last five year IDP cycle."
Executive Mayor Georlene Wolmarans said that she is excited about the approximately 300 job opportunities the housing projects have created in the community. "Twenty one local emerging contractors were appointed to build 390 houses from foundations upwards at a labour cost of R12 500 per top structure. The total amount paid out to these emerging local contractors amounts to R4 875 000.00 and four of these contractors were women."
"As we are committed to providing integrated and sustainable human settlements in our municipal area, Council budgeted R2 900 000.00 from its own funds in the 2014/2015 financial year," Mayor Wolmarans confirmed.
"Another contributing factor to our success story is our proactive engagements with affected communities. We are appointing community liaison officers from the communities to engage with the beneficiaries, contractors and the Steering Committees in each area."
"The implementation of housing projects is one of this municipality's biggest challenges, but in some ways also the most rewarding. We are always committed to making a significant change in the lives of the members of our community. I am extremely grateful to the housing staff for the excellent work that they do, and most importantly achieving outstanding results that makes a huge difference in the lives of our people", concluded Mayor Wolmarans.
