Hon Minister, against the plan's target of
9 421 title deeds transfers across nine provinces for the 2019-20 financial year, but the third quarter only 1 354 have been completed. These ongoing delay is compound the issues based by housing beneficiaries. The pre- emptive clause mandated by the national government stating that housing beneficiaries are not allowed to sell their housing units within the first eight years, meaning that housing beneficiaries are not only excluded from leveraging capital against their homes, but their informal sale of the Breaking New Ground, BNG, house means that the desperate South Africans are selling their houses illegally on the informal market to fund their basic living costs. Will the hon Minister consider adopting the DA's policy overlying beneficiaries to receive full ... [Inaudible.]... immediately upon received of their homes without the prohibited and absolute age exclusion. [Applause.]
The MINISTER OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS, WATER AND SANITATION: I
think that it is important for the DA to adopt a policy of clarifying her information. They are absolutely out of line all the time with the information that they bring to ... let me repeat, in one year we have given out 29 000 title deeds. What you are asking me has already been answered and I don't know why you are sleeping there. Thank you very much.
Question 59:
The MINISTER OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS, WATER AND SANITATION: Hon
Basson, the Vaal River pollution is a problem that has beset us and is proving to be a real crisis in the making. The Deputy President and myself and our members of staff have visited the place twice now. I have visited the place more than six times now to see how we can deal with the problem.
The major problem in the Vaal River is that the Vaal River is a congruence of rivers that flow from Mpumalanga, North West and Free State. They get to the Vaal waste water treatment area and we find that over years with the built up environment, without creating the space for the waste water treatment and without creating the ability to deal with this we are in a serious situation.
We have found that the problem that we have in the Vaal started in 2010 and has been growing over a period of time and as I speak now, out of 44 pumps that should be there only one pump station is working effectively. We are dealing with a serious problem here.
Right now we have had to get in extra support to assist the company that we had put up there to assist us in this matter and if the legislation will allow us, we would like to take over this entity to ensure that national government is responsible for this because the built environment that has come around the Vaal is greater than the capacity of the infrastructure that was provided for it in the initial stage. So, maintenance, continuous maintenance and the capacity to absorb this is lagging behind.
However, I have been heartened by the fact that the community of Vaal has been very willing to provide suggestions and support, the local community have been wanting to get involved in working there and the business community there has been very supportive of us to the extent that they have been able to withdraw seven law suits that they had against us. So, we are working together with the community there to ensure that all the problems that we are experiencing in this particular area are fixed at the earliest possible time. Thank you.