The Times: Housing heads must roll: Cosatu

http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article907045.ece/Housing-heads-must-roll–Cosatu

Housing heads must roll: Cosatu
Feb 10, 2011 7:21 PM | By Sapa

“This is a painful example of corruption, gross negligence and incompetence,” the federation said in a statement on Thursday.

“The Minister of Human Settlements, Tokyo Sexwale, must urgently rectify the problems with these houses and ensure that those responsible for this disaster are brought to book.”

Human settlements director-general Thabane Zulu told the human settlements portfolio committee it would cost about R58 billion for the human settlements department to fix poorly built houses.

The federation is “even more outraged” at Zulu’s admission that the department had not yet found a way to blacklist the contractors who built the “substandard houses”.

“Many of them may still have contracts with the national government to build more substandard housing,” Cosatu said.

“Heads must roll for this squandering of taxpayers’ hard-earned money, especially those workers who do not own houses and will have to wait even longer for a house thanks to this debacle.”

The federation said the “outrage” strengthened the argument for measures to be taken to stop the abuse of tendering procedures – which had allowed incompetent builders to keep winning government contracts and failing to deliver the much-needed houses to the people.