Oudtshoorn, 10 April 2017 – The Oudtshoorn Municipal Human Settlement Department has opened an appeal process to allow unhappy housing beneficiaries opportunity to contest the recently released allocation list.
The housing allocation list which was released last week Wednesday (05 April 2017) has according to Shehaam Sims, acting manager for Municipal Human Settlements Department, caused much consternation from some families who expected to be on the list.
“The reason for this is that people had completed subsidy application forms for Phase II and received approval for Phase II, but 419 such subsidies were approved whilst there were only 335 opportunities available. So there are at least 84 families that have not been allocated houses as per allocation list.”
The Human Settlements Department chose to allocate to the people according to age i.e. the eldest first until all the houses were allocated, the eldest being 82 years old. We also considered three people living with disabilities (wheelchair bound) regardless their ages; three families who gave up their opportunities in Phase 1 and needed to be accommodated now.
“The second reason for people being unhappy is because they received double storey houses while they have a preference for a single storey house; and once again, we placed the older people into the single storey houses with the younger people receiving the double stories.
The Human Settlement Department had already had a meeting with some of the representatives of the beneficiaries of Phase II on Friday, 07 April 2017.
“The Municipality has now afforded complainants an opportunity to appeal. Submissions for appeals would close on Monday, 10th April 2017 at 16:00. We are hopeful to be able to resolve the appeals by Tuesday, 18th April 2017. The affected families may attend at As Street, Bridgton,” Sims said.