The hi-tech system the City of Johannesburg has embraced to address the housing backlog and assist it in its housing development planning is paying dividends.
The system, which uses GPS-enabled Trimble hand scanners that can pick up geographical coordinates, take pictures and transmit all the necessary information to a database at the touch of a button, was officially launched at Alexsan Kopano Resource Centre in Alexandra on Wednesday. The launch followed the successful piloting of the project in Region D, which includes large parts of Soweto, where more than 200 000 households were visited and residents on the housing waiting list verified by more than 350 fieldworkers between February and May last year. The verification system is different from Gauteng Provincial Government’s Ziveze Campaign as the City’s is ward-based. For the next four months hundreds of fieldworkers will be visiting households in regions E, A and F to verify the status of the applicants on the housing waiting list.Eliminating fraud
Mayoral Committee for Housing Councillor Dan Bovu said Alexandra residents had on a number of occasions expressed concern that the government had allocated houses to people who were not on the list. Residents had also alleged that some of the recipients had acquired state houses through “dubious means”.“The implementation of the Campaign will eliminate fraud. Field workers will go out to residents and verify their status on the waiting list through a technologically advanced capturing device. The information will then be uploaded to the city’s database. A strict vetting process will ensure that everything is done transparently and above board,” explained Bovu.
