Government spends R3bn fixing shoddy RDP houses
Cost of repairs could have built 31,000 new low-cost homes
The human settlements department has spent more than R3.132bn rectifying shoddily built low-cost RDP houses over the past five years. This amount, according to the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB), could have built nearly 31,000 new low-cost RDP houses. Thousands of RDP houses around the country had to be demolished and rebuilt from scratch. This has led to hundreds of companies being blacklisted from doing work for the government. Human settlements minister Nomaindia Mfeketo told parliament late in 2018 that more than R3.132bn was spent by six provinces to rectify shoddily built houses over the past five financial years (2013-18). Mfeketo said the Eastern Cape spent the most, R2.1bn, on rebuilding and repairing 14,732 houses with structural defects and old houses. She revealed that KwaZulu-Natal spent R639.5m to repair or rebuild 4,115 houses between 2013 and 2014 and 2017 and 2018. The Free State spent R284.6m on rectifying an undisclosed number of the shoddily built...
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