BuaNews (Tshwane)
Proffesor Ndawonde
19 November 2008
Port Elizabeth — Domestic and seasonal farm workers, disabled and unemployed people were among the families who received houses in the Addo informal settlement in Port Elizabeth on Tuesday.
The Eastern Cape Department of Housing officially handed over 500 houses to families in the area, many of them earning less that R1000 per month.
The province is one of the provinces which was identified as having poor housing delivery, but through the Breaking the New Grounds housing project, the department is making head way to reduce the backlog.
Departmental spokesperson Lwandile Sicwetsha said the delivery of the houses were built under the R150 million project which will eventually see more than 2300 houses built in the Sunday's River Municipality.
"A further 1000 houses are currently under construction and will be handed over in February next year. The rest will be completed and handed over in March," said Mr Sicwetsha.
MEC for Housing Thobile Mhlahlo attended the handing over ceremony. He said the department was pleased with the size and quality of the houses, saying they were houses to be proud of.
"It gives us satisfactory that we are able to provide housing assistance to those who would not afford them normally," he said.
Meanwhile, the Zanemvula Housing Project in the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality has produced 1000 houses to beneficiaries in another area of Port Elizabeth
The Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu is expected to hand the houses over to the beneficiaries on Thursday.
The Zanemvula Housing Project is aimed at upgrading and formalising informal settlements in Nelson Mandela Bay.
The project is expected to deliver more than 15000 units with all basic social and economic amenities providing decent shelter to more than 90 000 people, making it one of the biggest housing projects in province. -
Companies to conduct site visits for construction of prisons
Pretoria - The four companies which qualified to submit tenders to construct new prisons between 2011 and 2013 will next week conduct site visits in preparation for submission of tender proposals in December 2008.
The prisons will be built in Paarl, East London, Nigel and Klerksdorp.
The Department of Correctional Service short-listed the Ikhwezi Consortium, South African Custodial Services (SACS), Siza Bantu and Umtya Nethunga for tendering for the multi-billion Rand construction programme.
The four Correctional Centres will accommodate at least 12 000 offenders and is expected to create 2 600 new permanent jobs on completion, the department said.
The process going forward includes a site visit by bidders, the publication of the final Request for Proposals on 1 December 2008 and submission of Request for Proposals (RFP) by 30 April 2009.
It is projected that the preferred and reserve bidders will be announced by May 2010 and that financial close could be achieved by November 2010.
This will enable construction to start in June 2011 and completion of construction to be in December 2012. The new facilities are expected to be operational by January 2013.
According to the department the National Bid Adjudication Committee led by Chief Deputy Commissioner Jenny Schreiner of Operations Management and Support approved the recommendations of the bid evaluation committee led by Advocate Patrick Mtshaulana.
The RFQ proposals were evaluated by an interdepartmental team composed of Correctional Services, National Treasury, the National Department of Public Works and members of the Transaction Advisory Team.
According to the department the process was strictly and confidentially managed to ensure fairness, competitiveness and objectivity with some independent observers like the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) overseeing and advising.
The Auditor General has also been requested to perform an audit on the RFQ process, in a further step to ensure that there was no undue influence of the process.
The process is managed to ensure effective participation of black businesses while also promoting local community equity involvement through engagement of local cooperatives with the aim of stimulating local economies.
Currently Correctional Services has 241 Correctional Centres with approved capacity of 114 000 accommodate 160 000 inmates resulting in overcrowding by 40 percent on average with some individual facilities being 300 percent full.
According to the department, the planned new centres will help accelerate current interdepartmental efforts to reduce chronic overcrowding in many correctional centres as over 20 000 additional bed spaces are targeted for the next five years through various interventions.
These include construction of new facilities, renovation and expansion of existing facilities, and optimal use of legislative provisions and partnerships to enhance alternative sentencing use for those categories of offenders posing limited or no danger to society.
The new generation facilities are also expected to help in creating an enabling environment for effective implementation of corrections and rehabilitation programmes for offenders.
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