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The Portfolio Committee on Human Settlements this week met with the Department of Human Settlements and its entities to deliberate on annual financial performance, as well as performance in delivering quality houses to South Africans.
The engagements started on Tuesday with a discussion with the department on its audit outcomes for the 2017/2018 financial year, as well as its performance and financial expenditure as per assessment by the Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation and the Auditor-General.
On Tuesday, the committee invited the department’s entities – the National Housing Finance Corporation (NHFC); National Urban Reconstruction and Housing Agency (Nurcha); Rural Housing Loan Fund (RHLF); Social Housing Regulatory Authority (SHRA); National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC); Housing Development Agency (HDA); Estate Agency Affairs Board (EAAB); Community Schemes Ombud Services (CSOS), for deliberations on their annual performance and financial reports.
Although the committee was generally satisfied with the performance of the department and some of its entities, it was particularly concerned about the performance of two entities: the EAAB and SCOS and called for the minister and the department to intervene to save the institutions from total collapse.
The Portfolio Committee on Human Settlements yesterday directed the department to develop a turnaround strategy to assist the two entities and report back to Parliament in six weeks’ time.
“We are not very happy with the fact that it does not look like they are going to meet their targets for this term, but we continue to engage with them. We are also concerned with the fact that NHBRC has regressed from unqualified audit to a qualified, a sign that something is not well. But generally the rest of the entities are not doing too badly – they can do better – we would want to see more improvement in their financial performance and the delivery of quality housing to the people of South Africa,” said Committee Chairperson Ms Nocawe Mafu.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Republic of South Africa: The Parliament.
