Getting to the bottom of the housing mess

The African Peoples Convention’s Zingisa Mkabile has put his finger on why so few houses are built in the Eastern Cape.

Speaking in the debate on Housing MEC Thoko Xasa’s policy speech he said it was that the standard of work was so poor that “every time we have to build the same house two or three times, spending a lot of money in the process.”

Mkabile said that more houses could have been built “if we did not have to clean up every time. We always have to have a follow-up programme in place to clean up”

Mkabile clearly does not have much faith in the department telling the MEC: “Your housing function was taken back to national government that is reviewing our ability to handle it and we should assist national department to take it back because we do not have the capacity”.

Health department ripped apart in Bhisho

The Eastern Cape Health department is being ripped apart in the Legislature today with the African People Convention’s Zingisa Mkabile saying that spending R1,5 million of the audio-visual promotion material is typical of MEC Nomsa Jajula.

“She has an appetite to spend on things that are not vital like the refurbishment of the whole floor where her office is – yet there is a shortage of everything in her department.”

And, he said: “The ruling party remains quiet”.

Earlier UDM leader Mhlati recalled the death of a child at the Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital in Mthatha saying the family could not access the file to find out why the child had died – “this was a black child who had suffered at the hands of a black government,” he said.

DA Health spokesman Athol Trollip also waded in saying with regard to the deaths of more than 100 babies at Ukhahlamba that his party would obtain the report handed to national minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang through the Promotion of Access to Information Act and lay “criminal charges of negligence” against those responsible.

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