MEC for Human Settlement Speed Mashilo
By Kopano Dibakwane
Service providers doing business with the Mpumalanga Department of Human Settlements must improve and exert more action to complete projects in order to enable the department to meet its constitutional mandate.
This was a stern directive by MEC Speed Mashilo during a two-day Performance Review and Planning exercise held in the City of Mbombela on Thursday 9 November.
The session was reportedly aimed at reviewing the department’s last performance while also planning for the coming years. Some of the topics on the agenda included; financial performance, governance, risk management, and knowledge management.
MEC Mashilo said that certain projects by service providers were terminated during his three-day unannounced visit to Gert Sibande District Municipality this week. This was reportedly after the individual contractors failed to honour a previous directive to start their projects, as mandated, and that has not happened.
” At the end of the day it’s not them who will feel the brunt, it is myself, the department and the party I represent, hence I want them to be terminated so that we appoint relevantly capacitated contractors who can do the work in record time and give us what we want.
” I have checked how many contractors we’ve appointed individually, how many houses and projects they have. If they don’t perform, our people will not be happy, we’ll always have toyi-toyis and our municipalities will always pick up the pressure. As a department we must do what we are expected to deliver,” said Mashilo.
He said that servicing of sites has been completed and allocation will take place in municipalities such as Steve Tshwete, Nkomazi, Govan Mbeki and Msukaligwa.
” What I expect to happen is for municipalities to take their fair portion of 60% of what we’ve done and we’ll take the 40%. In the 60% they must sell out those sites to the people who are in need and people can build for themselves. People tell me as I do door to door that they want land and they can build for themselves,” said Mashilo.
