Chairperson, hon Ministers, Minister Sexwale and Minister Geoffrey Doidge - the Deputy Ministers of the two respective departments, hon members of this august House, MECs for Human Settlements and Public Works from other provinces, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to extend our greetings to you.
I also wish to make reference to a lesson that we as MECs were taught by our Minister, Tokyo Sexwale, at the last Ministers and Members of Executive Councils, Minmec, meeting that we attended in Durban. It was a quotation from one of the finest theorists produced by the working-class revolution, Frederick Engels. The quotation goes as follows:
Until the unjust and evil system we have today is ended, planned, healthful living in co-operative, functional, truly human communities is impossible.
Let me express our gratitude for the opportunity afforded to us to follow in the footsteps of our Minister in presenting our plans and programmes working towards the achievement of goals set for 2012. We pledge that, as carriers of the baton for human survival, we will treasure and protect this legacy of a people united to build a better Northern Cape and better South Africa.
We stand here with this view in mind: unity, determination, shared vision and common purpose. The purpose of this shared view is to create a sense of unity and to hold people, organisations and institutions together in moving towards a positive common end.
Indeed, let us follow in the footsteps of the Minister. In his Budget Speech he clearly illustrated that 2010 is the year of working together to speed up effective service delivery to the people. This declaration is a clarion call to all of us to do things differently and do them with a new sense of urgency, as the Minister outlined in his speech in this debate today.
Let me also quote the words of Anna Hoxie, as follows:
The past is like a river flowing out of sight. The future is an ocean filled with opportunity and delight.
We must at all times appreciate that opportunities need people who seek them, see them, and thereafter seize them. Delight is the by-product of sweat and hard work. The Freedom Charter was crafted to be such an ocean of opportunity and delight 54 years ago.
The tens of thousands of people from all walks of life who put their demands as part of the campaign leading up to the adoption of the Freedom Charter on 26 June 1955 could not have fully comprehended the magnitude of their actions. Yet it was they who, 54 years ago, rose above the daily oppression and suffering of apartheid and declared, "Freedom in our lifetime!"
Allow me to say that in the 2009-10 financial year, the Northern Cape received a conditional grant of R173 million and an additional R152 million for priority projects. In total, we received R325 million for human settlements development.
We built 4 463 houses and serviced 1 794 sites in all five districts of the province as at 31 March 2010. Furthermore, 3 567 beneficiaries received title deeds. All housing beneficiaries of these programmes and plans received the basic services of sanitation, water and electricity.
The department identified the following informal settlement upgrading as priority projects for our province: Ouboks in Colesberg, totalling 2 220 units; Lerato Park in Galeshewe in Kimberley, with 5 000 units; Upington, with 915 units; John Taolo Gaetsewe, with 4 500 units; and Pampierstad, with 1 450 units.
The conditional grant to this province for 2010-14 is as follows: R273 260 million in 2010-11; R313 million in 2011-12; R426 million in 2012- 13; and R443 million in 2013-14.
In line with Outcome 8 and with the directive by the hon Minister, we have set ourselves targets as directed by the budget speech of the Minister.
In ensuring that we do things differently, and in line with the directive of the Minister as outlined in his budget speech, we were able to set targets for ourselves in regard to the following: acceleration of delivery of shelter opportunities; access to basic services; more efficient land utilisation; and an improved property market.
Following on the target set by the Minister, it is expected that as a province we will be able to ensure that by 2014 we have produced or constructed 13 980 informal households and 1 864 rental units. Taking into account the total backlog of the population in the province of 48 000, it is our firm commitment to double the target set by our Minister.
In regard to numbers, we expect to deliver an average of 3 495 informal units and 466 rental units per annum. It is important that the province continuously link human settlement development to job creation, skills development, poverty reduction, and local economic development in order to build sustainable human settlements.
We will strive to ensure that the concept of human settlement is well entrenched and implemented as directed by the hon Minister. In this province we have made a commitment to making sure that quality is not compromised. Learning from the past, we will upscale our inspection of houses being built; ensure that enrolment of projects with the National Home Builders Registration Council, NHBRC, is made; and ensure that defaulting contractors are dealt with in terms of the law.
In ensuring that we expedite our programme of reaching the target as directed by our Minister, we need to ensure that we mobilise both the private sector in our region and consistently engage with the national department to ensure that regional funding is allocated for our priority projects. [Time expired.]