The Minister of Public Works
The 1 200 properties are not untraceable as suggested by the Honourable Member. Rather, the land parcels in question cannot be linked to the Geographical Information System (GIS) due to the absence of cadastral information on them. The Department of Public Works (DPW) has therefore approached the Office of the Chief Surveyor-General to provide spatial geo-reference cadastral data of South Africa for these properties in the format of the (Environmental Systems Research Institute) ESRI files that are currently being used in the Department, so that the land parcels can be linked to the GIS. It is important for all property under the custodianship of the DPW to be put on the GIS system so that the Department or the Property Management Trading Entity (PMTE) is enabled to manage immovable assets optimally, incorporating the ability to do conditionality assessments and thus provide for asset investment decisions.
Attached to this reply is Annexure A, which lists the 1 200 properties.