The Polokwane municipality in Limpopo will build RDP houses for qualifying residents at the start of a new financial year in July, says Mayor John Mpe.

Speaking at a recent strategic planning session, Mpe said the move followed the municipality's accreditation by Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, which allows it to build its own houses.

"We welcome the Level Two accreditation by the minister, which gives us the authority to build RDP houses...

"Once we receive the necessary budgets from the National Treasury, we [will] then be able to build houses for...qualifying members of the community. It will no longer like before, when we had to wait for housing allocation," Mpe said.

The provincial Department of Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs has been slow in its efforts to achieve its target of building 49 911 housing units by 2024.

In the last financial year, the department built 4 122 houses in the province.

This slow pace of housing delivery was blamed on unnamed "numerous housing delivery challenges during the first two quarters of the previous financial year".

At the strategic planning session, Mpe also spoke about the need for the municipality to have its own "yellow fleet" to build and maintain roads under its jurisdiction.

"We have prioritised tarring of roads within villages and townships. Where a road is strategic enough for our local economy and links to major destinations, we need to tar that road. Where a road is strategic within a particular community and there are socio-economic, compelling reasons for us to do something about it, we need to pave that road.

"If we cannot do the two, we need to build our internal capacity to have our own yellow fleet to grade and re-gravel using our own plant, equipment and our own people," Mpe said.