Western Cape spends R355-million on preventing illegal land invasions
2 March 2021
It is incomprehensible that during the current financial year, the Western Cape Department of Human Settlements, has already spent more than R 355 million to prevent illegal land invasions and the illegal occupation of completed units. Between July 2020 and 28 February 2021, there were 1 014 attempts of illegal land invasions across the province, with the majority being in the Cape Metro.
This means, with the exclusion of the bulk services, approximately 2 150 Breaking New Ground (BNG)/free housing units could’ve been built.
It is deeply concerning that those encouraging these illegal land invasions are blatantly disregarding the impact this has on the most vulnerable, which they claim to represent. Knowing that it takes in excess of 1 500 days for a brand-new human settlements project to be completed to the point of handover to beneficiaries, we have put a plan in place to avoid all unnecessary delays on our side.
This process includes working smartly to obtain all the relevant and required statutory approvals, which amongst others consist of town planning, environmental impact studies, land surveying, engineering services and indeed the process of building the units.