Several residents of extension 11 in Ngcobo in the Eastern Cape are up in arms amid accusations that the Dr AB Xuma Local Municipality has allegedly deregistered nearly 800 approved housing beneficiaries.
The residents allege that the municipality is working with the Human Settlements Department to hatch up false claims which indicate that the beneficiaries are untraceable.
Some of the residents claim they have been waiting for RDP houses for close to two decades.
Those deregistered include residents Nobuntu Vuza and Mncedisi Krele who now demand to be reinstated.
“We applied for RDP houses in 2009. We’ve been waiting since then. We have now found out that we have been deregistered and we don’t know how,” Vuza says.
Krele adds, “It was in the year 2000 when we applied for houses. The municipality removed us from the place we were staying in, telling us that they will build houses there. But we don’t see anything being done here.”
The Dr AB Xuma local municipality has called on the affected residents to reapply for the RDP houses.
Mayor Siyabulela Zangwa maintained there were technicalities with the housing project making it hard to trace existing beneficiaries.
“The housing project was approved after a very long time. So, it’s important that we trace the beneficiaries. If a project is approved after a long time, we have experiences where beneficiaries are untraceable when we look for them to give them their houses,” he says.
Zangwa says the municipality had in fact verified some beneficiaries in 2022, saying while some beneficiaries showed up others didn’t, hence the decision to deregister them.
