Hon House Chair, Ministers and Deputy Ministers and colleagues and members in the gallery, the NFP welcomes the report tabled here today. We acknowledge that this department has over the last 25 years put in place policy
strategies and etc to deal with the issue of housing in South Africa.
Now, that it is the mandate it gets in terms of its Constitution. I want to plea with the Minister while the she is here, Minister, I will urge you to spend just one night, just one night in one of this RDP houses in winter. Just spend few hours at night and look at what life is for our people in these homes that we built for them. That is why I don't call them homes I call them houses and I feel there is a different between a house and a home. The substandard and the quality, the lack of proper sanitation and water, this is the life of our people 25 years into democracy.
Now don't misinterpret what I'm say, I'm not say there was no good work that has been done. Yes indeed millions of our people have been provided houses by the ANC, by the DA by the IFP by NFP wherever they govern. Let us be honest about it, we build houses but 25 years later millions of our people either remain homeless many of them died waiting on that waiting lists for home and they couldn't get one. And the question is why, what
haven't we been doing correct. Now the NFP have been repeatedly calling for a change in the model and I'm glad that in the state of the nation address in February the President announced a Human Settlement Development Bank.
We don't believe that is enough because it is not only government's responsibility to provide funding and that is why we say Minister, provide adequate fully service sites to the people, create this development bank and not only through the state, but also to outside investment so that they can all participate in providing houses and also creating a lot of jobs then the entire economy is going to be driven with this and a lot of people will get houses a lot sooner than they are getting now.
Now if you look at the current situation in South Africa even if the homeless is growing, what we are not taking into consideration while we are building houses is the increase in population which is increasing by 800 000 and almost a million a year. Now if you don't take that into consideration, it means the challenge of housing in South Africa is going to remain.
And I want to urge the department, and one of the major problems we got with all the departments is that departments are not adequately functioning in the interest of servicing people and with such a large proportion of our budget going to compensation to employers. It is time to fire those people who cannot perform. The NFP will support this Budget Vote on the bases that we are going forward in providing these houses to our people. Thank you very much.