In yet another housing scandal to rock Nelson Mandela Bay‚ the municipality cannot access a credible housing list of RDP beneficiaries‚ mayor Athol Trollip said on Tuesday.

This is forcing the municipality back to the drawing board to compile a new list –a blow to the tens of thousands of people who have been waiting for years to get houses.

The last known figure of beneficiaries on the metro’s waiting list was about 80‚000. This excludes the list of people whose homes need to be rectified.

Restarting the housing list could cause a major setback in a department that is already saddled with a number of bungles related to RDP projects.

Trollip said the political head of human settlements‚ Nqaba Bhanga‚ had been battling for the past three months at the helm to get his hands on the housing beneficiary list.

The new coalition government had promised to make the list public as it had been clouded in secrecy and mired in controversy.

At his report-back session on his first 100 days in office on Tuesday‚ Trollip said: “There is not a housing list in this city that is credible or honest.

“That is why we have people who have lived 13 to 20 years waiting for a house‚ and we have people who arrive over the weekend who move into a house or site‚ because they buy it.

“We have information that people have been selling their sites and houses – and that can only happen in the absence of a credible and coherent housing list.

“We will draw one up‚ so that you know that if you are number 1‚333‚ when that house is built‚ no one will go in there before you‚” Trollip said.

He lambasted the Housing Development Agency (HDA)‚ which he accused of overseeing shoddily built projects.

Full story in The Herald

TMG Digital/The Herald