The Gauteng Department of Human Settlements is now stable and is ready to deliver on its mandate, Human Settlements MEC Jacob Mamabolo said.

“As previously stated, the department is on a turnaround path to improve internal efficiencies and betterment of delivery of houses. We cannot achieve this without skilled professionals in strategic positions.

“We have since appointed the Head of Department (HOD), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Director for Supply Chain Management and we are in the process to appoint 2 Deputy Directors-General (DDGs)”, said the MEC on Friday.

MEC Mamabolo was presenting the 2014/15 Annual Report of the department.

He said that the department had improved its audit outcomes as witnessed by receiving unqualified audit for 2014/15 financial year.

“We have turned the corner, we have built confidence in governance, leadership and financial management,” he said.

The Turnaround Strategy

Mamabolo said the challenges faced by the Department on audit outcomes were in respect to financial management, leadership and overall governance and these are the core priorities of the Turnaround Strategy.

He said that the Department incurred irregular expenditure of R2. 6 billion which dated to previous years and part of it was declared upfront to the Auditor-General.

“As part of the Turnaround strategy, the Department started with investigations of financial mismanagement, poor compliance and irregular expenditure,” Mamabolo said.

“Another key challenge we faced was that for a period of five years, housing performance and output was on a consistent decline. For five years, the trend line of the delivery of Human Settlement has been that of a downward slide,” said the MEC.

Increased expenditure and declining housing performance

Mamabolo said that expenditure in the Department has been on the rise, but the performance was low.

He said the contradiction between increased expenditure and declining housing performance led to a challenge of poor relations with communities, which saw increase in the wave of a series of extremely violent and sustained community protests with housing at the core of the protests.

“I am pleased to reaffirm the point made by the Premier that we have built a relationship of trust with the people. As Premier said, we have stabilised the relations with communities, we have built relations of trust and mutual engagement with communities, “he said.

Mamabolo said in the last quarter the department improved its performance compared to the same quarter in the last financial year.