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Uproar over N2 housing project

PARLIAMENT'S standing committee on public accounts degenerated into a war of words yesterday as MPs fought to protect their parties from scrutiny and sanction over the government's disastrous R4,2billion N2 Gateway housing project in Cape Town.

PARLIAMENT'S standing committee on public accounts degenerated into a war of words yesterday as MPs fought to protect their parties from scrutiny and sanction over the government's disastrous R4,2billion N2 Gateway housing project in Cape Town.

Scopa has been investigating what went wrong with the project ever since an auditor-general report revealed some problems.

The A G found that the project manager, Cyberia, was appointed even though it was not a winning bidder and payments of more than R12million to Cyberia were all "irregular".

The report found that it promised to build 22000 houses within six months though this was technically impossible.

Yesterday's Scopa meeting resolved to fling out "a wide net to capture everyone" involved. But MPs got into an argument over a City of Cape Town forensic report into the N2 project.

The results of the investigation - reportedly commissioned just after the DA took over the city from the ANC - have never been made public.

Scopa chairperson Themba Godi said if the report had been made public it could have helped Scopa's investigation.

But ANC MP Roy Ainslie said the report should not be mentioned in the resolution at all.

DA MP Mark Steele then wanted Scopa to agree that the City of Cape Town had been under political pressure to deliver the impossible, but all other MPs disagreed.

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