The City of Cape Town hopes to complete the construction of 1005 serviced sites for its Gugulethu/Nyanga infill housing project soon, which will make way for the construction of subsidised housing units as part of the city’s commitment to enabling redress, it said on Sunday.

The Gugulethu/Nyanga housing project comprised the development of two large vacant sites along Govan Mbeki (Lansdowne) Road, mayoral committee member for human settlements Benedicta van Minnen said.

The installation of civil engineering services was expected to be completed by mid-May. Erf 8448 in Gugulethu would yield 571 housing opportunities, while erf 2849 Mau Mau in Nyanga would yield 434 housing opportunities.

“This has been a challenging project with many delays that were caused by intense community dynamics. It is therefore quite a feat that we are nearing this milestone. I thank all of our partners and stakeholders, as well as the community, for working with us so that we could make progress possible.

“The Gugulethu/Nyanga housing project is now at a point where consultation on the beneficiary identification process has started, which will pave the way for the top-structure tender process to commence,” Van Minnen said.

Presentations had been made to the project steering committee, subcouncils, and the affected communities regarding the allocation policy and the beneficiary identification process. Importantly, the proposals had to match the policy and the community expectations in Gugulethu, Nyanga, and New Crossroads.

Following the consultative beneficiary identification process, the names on the city’s housing database, as per the oldest application dates of the qualifying beneficiaries, would be drawn from the respective suburbs of Gugulethu, Nyanga, and New Crossroads and made available for public scrutiny to ensure transparency. Once this had been completed a final beneficiary list would be made available to the respective communities.

It was estimated that construction of the 1005 housing units would start in February 2017 and would take about three years to complete if all went according to plan, Van Minnen said.

[Sourve: African News Agency]