The Department of Human Settlements on Monday stated that shoddy construction work, and inferior workmanship on the part of contracted construction companies meant that “money has been wasted”, as these houses had to be destroyed.

Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale noted that after a recent government meeting in North West province, the department was informed that some 1 500 houses in the North West would have to be destroyed, and a similar number in the Eastern Cape, at Sweet Water, would also have to be destroyed.

The Minister further explained that some R300-million was being spent on rectifying houses in the North West, and about R500-million was spent rectifying improperly built homes in KwaZulu-Natal.

Sexwale was addressing journalists regarding the Department’s commissioning of an audit into housing delivery, which would seek to: facilitate criminal action; institute civil action; force contractors to finish their work; make claims against contractors which have not done their work properly; blacklist repeat offenders in all provinces; and name and shame people both inside and outside of government, who were involved in unlawful activities.

The audit would, among other things, address shoddy construction work, inferior workmanship and broken houses, as well as the continuous contracting of the same bad contractors.

Sexwale also cautioned that a distinction should be drawn between “bad contractors” and small to medium-sized and micro enterprise black economic-empowerment (BEE) contractors, as they were not one and the same.

“There is good work happening. Let’s not give small BEE companies a bad name when many of them are doing great work,” Sexwale said.

He did however add that “crooks have come in”, and the department wanted to claim it’s money back from them. “There are rotten people. They take advantage of the public sector,” he said of the ‘fly-by-night’ contractors that had emerged to “make a quick buck”.

He added that the huge amount of funding put towards housing delivery by the National Treasury, meant that ‘wrongdoers’ were attracted as they saw a gap and wanted to capitalise on public funds and “crack the system”.

“We are going after those people now,” he added.

The department has delivered over 2,8-million homes since 1994, and said that it was on track to meet targets for the current financial year.