Durban — Human Settlements Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi said town planning in municipalities needed to improve the turnaround time in unlocking land. She said projects could not collapse because of poor government planning and co-ordination.
Kubayi was speaking at the closure of the Human Settlements Indaba at Durban Exhibition centre on Monday. The indaba was themed “Transforming Human Settlements Environment through Accelerated Planning, Implementation and Public-Private Partnership”.
She said an accountability mechanism should be put in place at each level to ensure faster project development.
“In relation to funding, the government alone cannot mobilise enough resources to fund the sector. A partnership with the private sector is an absolute necessity for us to be able to meet the housing targets we have set for ourselves. Our funding approach needs to be balanced. There is a view that says our approach is city-centric, and we are not paying attention to rural issues. There is a need for increasing programmes in rural areas,” she said.
Furthermore, she said community participation remained a critical element in creating sustainable human settlements.
She believed creating sustainable human settlements was about building top structures and houses that will reduce the backlog. Adding that their approach needed to include active participation in communities.
Kubayi said the issue of availability of land for human settlements needed urgent intervention and it was crucial to use all the tools available.
She further said the land issue was linked to planning, as they wanted to ensure that planning systems were more co-ordinated within the government institutions, the government and the private sector.
“What came out very strongly in the planning commission is how projects that have secured funding and are ready for implementation collapse because government institutions do not make land available on time due to internal government inefficiencies. We will take this up through the intergovernmental mechanisms, including the district,” said Kubayi.
The deputy president of Black Business Council in Built Environment Kile Mteto said they wanted to look at issues of amending the regulations to allow the use of ACT (Alternative Construction Technologies) and IBT (Innovative Building Technologies) in the space of development of social infrastructure to reduce the time it takes to complete the projects, deal with issues of quality housing and climate change challenges.
Kubayi listed the critical points to get the sector going:
• Making land available for human settlements.
• Improving the planning and co-ordination systems in government.
• Creating an ethical, capable developmental state to drive projects.
• Crowding-in funding for projects.
• Increasing community participation in the development of projects and human settlements.
• Creating accountability mechanisms for monitoring the performance.
• We need innovation in the sector – in project development, funding and technical capacity utilisation.
• We all need to commit to a social compact so that we can hold each other accountable.
Daily News