Cape Times: Give us housing delivery data or else, city is warned

http://www.capetimes.co.za/give-us-housing-delivery-data-or-else-city-is-warned-1.1094405

July 6 2011 at 12:41pm

Regina Graham

THE Right2Know campaign is threatening further action against the City of Cape Town if it has not provided all the information requested in a PAIA application over a month ago.

Murray Hunter, national co-ordinator of the Right2Know Campaign, said that documents from the city were delivered yesterday.

“It is a huge pile of information that we received from the city, but is it actually answering the questions we asked?” said Hunter.

On May 24, community organisers from Blikkiesdorp, Zille-Raine Heights, Newfields Village Anti-Eviction Campaign and the Mandela Park backyarders joined Right2Know and submitted applications to the city requesting access to information about housing delivery and resettlement plans.

The group submitted Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) applications demanding access to budget reports, resettlement plans for families, housing allocation plans and documents showing land ownership in their communities.

The city was to provide a response within 30 days of the applications.

It had not respond within the 30 days, but did ask for more time and now the group was going to sort through all the information, Hunter said.

If the information they received from the city was not what they were looking for, the group was planning to take further action.

“We will decide in the next 48 hours if our demands have been met or not and we are planning to take to the streets in larger numbers next week,” Hunter said.

Matilda Groepe, co-ordinator of the Blikkiesdorp Anti-Eviction Campaign, said that she is tired of waiting for a response from the city about resettlement plans.

“The city has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with us,” Groepe said.

“We have been living in temporary housing for three years and want to know what they had in mind when they built that informal settlement.”

Once the Right2Know group gains access to the information, the next step is what the group will be able to do with it, Hunter said.

“These documents are not going to give them clean water or a recreational facility, so it’s part of a much longer, stronger process,” Hunter said.

regina.graham@inl.co.za