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The Congress of South African Trade Unions is appalled at the announcement in the housing settlements portfolio committee by Thabane Zulu, Director-General of the Department of Human Settlements, that it will cost a massive R58 billion for the Department to fix poorly built ‘RDP’ houses.

The federation is even more outraged at his admission that the Department has not yet found a way to blacklist the contractors who built these substandard houses, and that many of them may still have contracts with the national government to build more substandard housing.

This is a painful example of corruption, gross negligence and incompetence. The Minister of Human Settlements, Tokyo Sexwale, must urgently rectify the problems with these houses and ensure that those responsible for this disaster are brought to book. Heads must roll for this squandering of taxpayers’ hard-earned money, especially those workers who do not own houses and will have to wait even longer for a house thanks to this debacle.

This outrage strengthens the argument for measures to be taken to stop the abuse of tendering procedures which has allowed incompetent builders to keep winning government contracts and failing to deliver the much-needed houses to the people.