Des-colored Issues
The Wentworth community feels that the ruling party has sidelined them. Des D’Sa of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) talks to this issue.
Debbie Speaks
Debbie Peters explains exactly how the relocation of the Barracks community took place. It left many of the tenants in a state of posttraumatic stress and depression after their possessions were thrown out and their homes of 36 years were bulldozed.
Access for physically challenged residents
How can the physically challenged and the elderly, who need wheelchairs, be expected to use these walkways?
Lack of service delivery and women
Womens’ sense of dignity compromised by lack of basic services
A trip into any of the hundreds of informal settlements in South Africa is a brutal reminder of the need to highlight issues such as the absence of basic services for women living in impoverished conditions.
Women struggle against the diseases that flourish in areas that offer virtually no services.
Housing Department Response 2
“Good Morning
In response to your e-mail below, please find our response as follows:-
The overall cost of the project is as follows:
1. Initial costs incurred for professional fees = R 3 143 341.00
2. Construction costs = R 41 821 145.00
3. New professional costs = R 1 561 800.00
4. Socail facilitation costs = R 100 000.00
5. Contingencies [ demolition and sectional title costs] = R 1 491 006.00
TOTAL COST = R 48 117 292.00
Housing Department Response
We write to the housing department to find out why the Barracks tenants were forcibly removed from their houses and why their previous dwellings were destroyed and not upgraded as they had requested.
Yunus Sacoor, Deputy Head of Housing, eThekwini Municipality, responds that; the Housing Department assisted all tenants in the relocation process to ensure that the movement process took place in an orderly fashion. They were moved because the Tara Road complex was located within the Major Hazardous Industrial (MHI) zone, and therefore alternative accommodation was made available for the tenants. According to him all tenants agreed in writing to the relocation to the new complex.
Grootboom Housing Crisis
A film that investigates the case of the Grootboom community living around the sports field awaiting their promised housing.A gritty look at the squalor and poverty in an area in which 20 000 people crowd into a 2km radius with a broken down ablution block and very little service delivery.