MAKHADO (LOUIS TRICHARDT) – The highly controversial hostel redevelopment project in Tshikota, once considered as a hopegiving outcome for a neglected township, is now described by residents as “a multi-million rand monument to incompetence and maladministration,” fit only for complete demolishion.

With sub-standard materials and workmanship, an unsightly ghost town unfit for human habitation was created under the protection of the provincial building authorities, at a cost of several millions of rand on a valuable piece of serviced municipal land.

Hush-hush efforts to redeem the fiasco proved to no avail.

The low-cost housing project, envisaged to satisfy the high demand and dire need for good-quality, affordable housing in this disadvantaged area, comprises more than 70 residential units and was supposed to be completed during June 2002.

Although all the structures were seemingly erected, the project was never officially completed. It in fact never really commenced legally. In contravention of the national laws regulating the building industry, the contractor, appointed by the provincial housing authorities, started building without having approved building plans, changing important tender specifications as he went along.

Efforts by the Makhado Municipal building inspectorate to call the contractor to order were simply ignored. Letters written to the provincial authorities – including the then MEC for Local Government and Housing, also had no effect.

While the municipal housing inspectorate battled to call the contractor to order, the contractor pitched up at a municipal Council meeting, issued a political statement in which a vitriolic personal attack was launched against the municipal building inspector, and then announced a donation for youth work in Tshikota – an amount of about half of what he owed the municipality in building plan fees. The contractor was enthusiastically applauded by the then mayor Tlakula and ANC Councillors.

The Makhado Municipality eventually refused to accept the “completed” project. There were later efforts though, to ratify lowered tender specifications. Since then, a deadly silence has descended on the dilapidated sub-standard ghost town.

When this reporter visited the abandoned project last weekend, the roof of a sub-standard unit was found completely blown away by the wind. The sub-standard corrugated iron sheets were simply lifted off the sub-standard roof trusses and scattered through the adjacent RDP-residential area.

Obviously no efforts were made to repair the wind damage to the abandoned and uninhabited structure. Many of the roofs and outside doors of the units are visibly seriously flawed. Some of the sub-standard doors have simply started disintegrating. In some of the units, illegal squatting has started.

While the project was still under construction, the DA Ward Councillor for Ward 1 (Tshikota), Ms Marie Helm, called attention to the safety hazard caused by the non-compliance with legal specifications in workmanship and materials. She said the incredibly low quality of workmanship would endanger the lives of inhabitants.

The Makhado Municipal Council officially decided that no official questions posed to Council by Councillor Helm would be answered.

This week, Councillor Helm remarked: “It is with sadness and alarm that we now see our predictions come true.

“This is supposed to be a low-cost housing project – not an RDP development. Council will expect people to pay for these units. How can any person with common sense expect human beings to move into these units and to pay for it? Surely the best thing to do is in fact to force the contractor to destroy these units at his own cost and to get a competent contractor to build units according to SABS standards and according to national building regulations.”

Councillor Helm said if Black Economic Empowerment is abused as an excuse for corruption, nepotism and self-enrichment of a political elite, it is once again the poorest of the poor who remain powerless to protect themselves or to improve their desperate situation.