STATE OF THE NATION ADDRESS 2006
Housing delivery to accelerate
6 February 2006
South Africa's National Housing Finance Corporation is to be transformed into a Housing Corporation that will provide finance to poor and middle-income people, as part of a range of measures to eliminate "the duality of living spaces inherited from apartheid," says President Thabo Mbeki.
Delivering his State of the Nation address at the opening of Parliament in Cape Town on Friday, Mbeki said he expected the Housing Ministry and the country's financial institutions "to reach final agreement without further delay on the modalities for utilising the R42-billion set aside by the financial institutions for housing development for poor and middle-income groups."
Mbeki said the government would accelerate the expansion of housing stock to address the needs of South Africa's homeless.
"Already, the Ministry of Housing and the South African Local Government Association have reached an agreement on the sale of land for housing development," he
told Parliament. "Through this agreement, municipalities will allocate land close to economic centres for housing development for middle and lower income people."
The President said these steps were "central to the attainment of a society free of shack settlements in which all our people enjoy decent housing."
He added that the government had brought forward by a year - to 2007 - its target of eliminating the system of bucket toilets in the country's established settlements.
Mbeki pointed out that access to basic clean running water had improved from 59% of the population in 1994 to 92% in 2005, with an additional 3%, or 1.5-million people, targeted for 2006.
Access to basic sanitation had improved from 48% in 1994 to 67% in 2005, with 2-million households, or 8.2-million people, being provided with basic sanitation in that period.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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