The Gauteng Provincial Government last Wednesday officially delegated some housing and human settlements functions as well as decision-making authority to the three metros in the province.

Gauteng MEC for Local Government and Housing Humphrey Mmemezi and the three Metro Mayors of Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane signed a Memorandum of Agreement on Accreditation in Midrand, Johannesburg.

Through this process the metros will now be able to coordinate and integrate human settlement planning and development within the municipal Integrated Development Planning process and realise significant improvement in service delivery.

The metros will eventually take over the housing functions from the provincial government.

The MEC said that with the signing of the agreement, government was proving its commitment and willingness to substantially deal with the housing backlog across the province and heighten the rate of service delivery.

“We are committing to ensuring the progressive realisation of our people’s rights of access to decent shelter and sustainable human settlements and we have confidence in both the accreditation process and the capacity of our metros to perform and deliver,” Mmemezi said.

He emphasised that the accreditation process was receiving urgent attention in municipalities and soon people would access housing from their metros.

“I am tempted to announce that our communities should approach municipal offices closer to where they live for their housing needs. Unfortunately provincial and municipal officials are still busy finalising details and plans for this process,” he said.

He added that once these plans were complete “we will convene once again to make that announcement”.

The MEC said the province, together with the metros, had set 2014 as the target for fully assigning housing and human settlements functions to metros including financial management of national housing funding allocations.

Tshwane Executive Mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa said that the metros would do their utmost to execute the functions bestowed upon them.

“We are looking forward to execute these functions and we thank the provincial government for having confidence in the metros to restore the dignity of the people of Gauteng and ensure efficient service delivery,” Ramokgopa said.

He further said that “with this process, the metros will be able to respond quicker to the communities’ needs and thus the poorest of the poor will benefit”.

Source: allAfrica.com