Hon Chairperson, hon Minister, hon Deputy Minister and hon members, the UDM welcomes the strategic thrust of the policy statement by the Minister as captured in her foreword to the departmental five-year strategic annual performance plans of 2014 to 2019. We believe that there can be a working relationship when it comes to the provision of houses as basic shelter, quality accommodation and shorter delivery turnaround time.
The delivery of houses through community-based co-operatives, as an option, will be a significant intervention in creating job opportunities and transferring skills to communities whilst creating value with regard to property ownership. The UDM supports community house-building programmes.
The Housing Policy should also be located in the larger economic strategy as one mechanism of creating jobs in order to combat and eradicate homelessness and poverty. Ownership of houses without having jobs has proven to be unsustainable and sometimes destructive, as owners tend to either sell or rent them out in exchange for short-term relief from hunger.
The commitment of the Minister to providing decent accommodation is much appreciated. As the UDM, we believe that houses ought to be a shelter, enough to accommodate a family. This means that future human settlements should enable communities to find or create jobs and get access to social services within their area, so that we can create communities that are economically viable and self-reliant. The performance and service delivery information is raising a number of issues, some of which we are concerned about; and in this regard, we invite the hon Minister to take action on those matters. Amongst those issues is the reported low performance by the Eastern Cape and Limpopo provinces, which have a high housing backlog, both for urban and rural communities.
Statistics show that the backlog in sanitation can largely be attributed to rural areas. In this regard, the department cannot afford to underspend on the Rural Household Infrastructure Grant. Traditional leaders, as role- players in the housing sector, must be brought closer to this process to avoid repeated underexpenditure when services are desperately needed by communities.
The municipal human settlement capacity programme should come as a mitigating factor in relation to the increasing subsistence and travel expenditure. In the same vein, the projected increase in compensation of employees for the financial years 2014-15 to 2016-17, must reverse the increase in expenditure on consultants and professionals, as reported under Programme 3. This means that as the department reduces vacancies, it must, amongst other things, target technical skills and provide the required technical assistance required by the 53 municipalities. Regarding Programme 4, expenditure will require dedicated monitoring and evaluation with early-warning systems, and we hope that the Minister will ensure that such transfers are used within a specified financial season for intended purposes. The UDM supports the Budget Vote. I thank you. [Applause.]
THE DEPUTY MINISTER OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS: Allow me, hon Chairperson, to start with hon Gqada ... [Interjections.] ... and remind her that it is important that she must be honest with the House and inform the House that she was a member of the mayoral committee of human settlements in the City of Cape Town that is responsible for providing "porta-potties" to the people of Khayelitsha. [Applause.]
I also want to educate her about Parliament by telling her that Water and Sanitation deals with the issues of the bucket system, and this morning the Minister of Water and Sanitation dealt with this issue during her Budget Vote - and I was there.
Allow me to welcome back to human settlements the Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu. [Applause.]
Minister Naledi Pandor; Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Human Settlements, hon Nocawe Mafu; hon Members of Parliament; honoured guests; MEC Ravi Pillay; and people of Dunoon, my constituency, I greet you all this afternoon.
May I also extend a word of welcome to the Director-General, Thabane Zulu, and his human settlements team, which includes chairpersons and chief executive officers, CEOs, of our housing institutions. Greetings to all the staff in the Ministry led by Francois Hugo.
Fellow South Africans, we are debating this Budget Vote at a time when we are mourning the passing of an ANC Member of Parliament, hon Nosipho Ntwanambi, who was a former Chief Whip of the NCOP and a Deputy President of the ANC Women's League. Just two weeks ago, we laid to rest a military veteran, Comrade Lumko Huna. These were both selfless leaders who sacrificed their lives for the struggle. We shall pick up their fallen spears. May their souls rest in peace!
On 18 July 2014, the birthday of the world icon, the first President of the democratic South Africa, Tata Nelson Mandela, will be marked all over the world. We will commit ourselves to doing cleaning, as instructed by our President Jacob Zuma in his state of the nation address.
As we mark 20 years of freedom, we do so by responding positively to the historic document of our people, the Freedom Charter, which states, "There shall be houses, security and comfort!", as well as the manifesto of the ruling party.
In line with this, we are expected to do the following: provide 1,5 million houses in the next five years; accelerate the provision of basic services and infrastructure in all existing informal settlements; mobilise for the supply of affordable houses to teachers, nurses and police officers; and eliminate the title deeds backlog.
We are proud of our track record as we gear ourselves to redouble our efforts in the delivery of housing in the next five years.
The Department of Human Settlements does have a good story to tell. In the past 20 years, we have built more than 3,6 million houses, benefiting well over 12 million people. More than 400 000 households in well-located informal settlements have been provided with access to basic services. More South Africans have access to basic services, such as electricity and water, than there were before 1994. [Applause.]
During the early years, the Department of Human Settlements focused on the provision of housing to people at the lower end of the market, those earning between R0 and R3 500 per month. This category qualifies for a full government subsidy. Municipalities and provinces are urged to prioritise the allocation of housing to the most vulnerable sectors in our society, namely the elderly, people with disabilities and child-headed households.
Over the years our policies have evolved. Now we provide rental stock and we also have affordable housing. We have increased the category of affordable housing as we delivered through the revised Finance Linked Individual Subsidy Programme, FLISP, managed by the National Housing Finance Corporation, NHFC. These programmes cater for different income categories ranging from R3 501 to R15 000 and are meant to normalise the housing market.
We also regulate the sectional titles market. We do this through the newly established CSOS, led by Chairperson of the Board, Reverend Vukile Mehana.
The transfer of the Estate Agency Affairs Board, EAAB, from the Department of Trade and Industry to the Department of Human Settlements has completed our institutional arrangements of making sure that the department regulates the entire housing market. This empowers us to urgently use all the tools at our disposal to correct the distortions in the housing market that remain with us into our 20 years of democracy.
The National Urban Reconstruction and Housing Agency, Nurcha, has intensified its role of giving bridging finance to contractors. We are excited about their incubator programme with the Small Enterprise Development Agency, Seda.
As government, we have intensified the upgrading of informal settlements. We have achieved this through the National Upgrade Support Programme, NUSP, in partnership with the Housing Development Agency. The NUSP is meant to provide support to provinces and municipalities in the upgrading of informal settlements and to build capacity in local authorities. We have 50 municipalities taking part in the NUSP programme as we speak, and all mining towns will be included in this current financial year.
The success of informal settlement upgrading programmes lies in our ability to draw in affected communities. It is critical that people are active participants and not merely recipients of government's delivery programme. We must promote the notion of an active citizenry in line with the National Development Plan, NDP. I am happy that the department has taken this issue seriously.
In regard to our annual performance plans and Medium Term Strategic Framework, MTSF, we are committing ourselves to increasing the participation of stakeholders in housing delivery by encouraging communities through community-based organisations, civil society and other forms of nongovernmental entities to take part in the human settlements delivery chain.
We do so as we believe that we are all creative beings. We have dreams and imagination and we can think creatively. Our bodies are the tools of creativity. What people want is that we, as government, must create an environment conducive for them to unleash their potential. There are no free space travellers on Earth - we are all one crew.
As a department, we have also agreed to promote the use of alternative building technology as we seek to build integrated and sustainable human settlements. The National Home Builders Registration Council, NHBRC, is leading this process and they are about to create the institution to ensure that we use these alternative technologies. There are provinces that are taking this issue seriously and have housing which is built using alternative technology. [Interjections.]
Don't tell me about the Western Cape. Think about porta-potties - that is not a good story for me.
We will continue to reactivate our communities in support of the People's Housing Process, PHP. This programme needs to be supported because it gives ordinary women an opportunity to build their own homes and support each other. However, there are unresolved issues in this regard which will be attended to by those NGOs that we are working with.
As a department, we are working closely with Slum Dwellers International, SDI, the Federation of Urban Poor, FedUP, and others. We also visited India, together with Slum Dwellers International, where we learnt about the concept of "sustainable livelihood" when we are dealing with issues of human settlements.
The Department of Human Settlements hosts youth builds every year. This year, we had a youth build in Galeshewe in Kimberley, where 76 houses were built and they are of good quality. They were built with face brick.
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the project and laid bricks. We are urging provinces to identify youth contractors and empower them accordingly. We do this in partnership with the National Youth Development Agency, NYDA, and other stakeholders.
We welcome the Minister's announcement to fast-track the building of houses for military veterans. We will do so in partnership with the Department of Military Veterans. We also had a number of dialogues with people living with disabilities in Mitchells Plain. This was attended by Deputy Minister Bogopane-Zulu. One of the resolutions of that engagement was the call made by the disabled people; they were calling upon us, Minister, to open regional offices in the province for closer access to communities. They don't trust the DA-led government. This engagement was also attended by Deputy Director-General Maphisa.
With regard to international relations, as a country, we are part of the Secretariat of the African Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development, Amchud. We are in the process of preparing the Habitat III report that will be submitted in September by the Minister in New York.
We will also be hosting the Slum Upgrading Conference in March 2015, a decision which was taken in Morocco in November 2013. I want to give the Minister more time for her reply, so I thank you. [Applause.]