Sexwale to monitor builders 'via Google Earth'

Thieving or incompetent building contractors who are squandering billions in tax rands will soon have no place to hide - thanks to new mega-sleuth software that will give Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale a desktop view of all national housing projects.

Sexwale on Thursday said the program, to be launched in April, would, at the click of a mouse, provide him with real-time access to the 7 994 projects happening across South Africa.

Explaining to the Parliamentary Oversight Committee how the program worked, Sexwale said he would be able to click on a location on a map, and would then be able to see all the details of the project's progress.

Details would include information such as the approval processes followed, who adjudicated tender processes and the payments made.

Sexwale said that should he suspect any funny business, he would stop payments.

Taking the hi-tech stakes even further, Google Earth - a program that allows users to zoom in on images of the earth - would be embedded in the program, allowing Sexwale to check up on progress of the various sites.

"With Google you can see the place; it lets me see the houses being built there. We have got to use technology to follow them," Sexwale said of developers and developments.

This was particularly necessary as across the country about 40 000 dwellings needed to be demolished because of contractors having taken the government "for a ride".

"If I know there is a problem, I will send in (head of the Special Investigating Unit) Willie Hofmeyr," said Sexwale.

He promised that this was no idle threat, and that the integrity of the process could be trusted, because Hofmeyr had "taken a number of people to the cleaners" and had even been willing to investigate now-president Jacob Zuma.

Sexwale said those who failed to properly monitor projects, who incorrectly approved developments or who were guilty of nepotism would also be held to account.

"How refreshing is that, Mr Steyn?" he asked the DA's Butch Steyn, who had expressed scepticism.

Sexwale said corruption had resulted in R1.3 billion, or 10 percent of the ministry's budget this year, being lost on fixing uninhabitable structures.

"We could have done other things with that money," Sexwale said.

"There are a few good BEE companies but the majority of companies just took government to the cleaners."

He had high praise for Western Cape Premier Helen Zille, using terms of endearment in describing how they were working together to fast-track housing delivery.

The City of Cape Town, which was kicked off the N2 Gateway project when the DA took over the city from the ANC in 2006, had also been invited back on to the project-management team, Sexwale said.

He said the conditions of "squatters" were "an apocalyptic situation a la Haiti", but that the situation was not the fault of the government.

"Please don't hold us accountable for this... Government did not put them there," Sexwale said.

However, he promised that the government had a plan to get rid of service-delivery bottlenecks, and said when the backlog of 2.1 million homes had been cleared, his department would cease to exist.

"The ministry will end when it is done. We don't need a ministry that gives away free houses," he said.

Cape Argus

Posted at 09:03AM Feb 01, 2010 by Editor in Residential  |  Comments[8]