Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane has hit out at the Housing Development Agency (HDA) for not building enough houses in the province.

He was speaking at a Human Settlements Indaba at Nelson Mandela University’s south campus on Wednesday.

The indaba started on Wednesday and ends on Friday.

Mabuyane said the department’s money should not be kept in a bank but rather spent on building houses.

“HDA ... don’t keep Eastern Cape money in your bank, we want houses out of that money.

“We want HDA, if given a task as an implementing agent, to do that work. Simple and no stories.

“If you can’t do that work [then] let’s get our money back and appoint [different] service providers to do work and get houses built,” he said.

Mabuyane said in the last financial year the province delivered 5,338 houses.

A quarter of the figure benefited women and child-headed families.

“We’ve also provided shelter to our youth, veterans and people with disabilities.

“Construction of these housing units also come with economic opportunities for people in the construction sector as the government spends billions of rand on these projects.

“More than 182,000 jobs were created in the province in the process through housing construction.

“The more you don’t spend money on infrastructure, the more you are killing jobs,” he said.

A budget of R215m has been passed this financial year as the province grapples with an astronomical housing backlog.

In Nelson Mandela Bay alone, the housing backlog stands at nearly 90,000.

Speaking on the sidelines of the indaba, Mabuyane said he held a meeting with the HDA where it promised to improve service.

“There’s been some constraints and challenges that we’re trying to unlock in that space.

“What we don’t want to see is any form of fiscal dumping.

“If money is allocated in this financial year it must be spent as there must be value for money.”

The department of human settlements is working with the agency.

Human settlements MEC Siphokazi Lusithi said an assessment done in 2017 indicated just more than 80.1% of South Africans lived in formal dwellings.

“The lowest proportion across provinces was the Eastern Cape at 70.4%,” she said.

“One of the contributors to this reality is that the prevailing period is characterised by deep-seated challenges of unemployment, inequality and poverty.

“It then follows that the need for decent shelter and social infrastructure is on the rise.

“This means we must prioritise the implementation of programmes which will yield the greatest impact towards the attainment of vision 2030,” Lusithi said.