Chairperson, a housing allocation strategy that prescribes the process of selection, evaluation and approval of housing subsidies to qualifying beneficiaries has been approved. One of the main changes to the allocation process is the fact that the process has been depoliticised. Municipal councillors, in particular, are no longer part of the selection process. The allocation process is as follows: As soon as the houses are ready for allocation and occupation, the project developer will request the National Housing Database administrator to provide contact details of a predetermined number of persons who are registered in the housing database. This process is strictly on a first come, first served basis.
Names are provided by the National Housing Database. These names will be given to the allocation committee comprising officials from the municipality and provincial housing, as well as the Human Settlements Department. The committee will evaluate the details of the persons provided by the National Housing Database. If a person satisfies the subsidy qualification criteria, they will then provide that name to the developer. The project developer will then invite the selected persons to complete housing application forms. Once the application forms are received, verified and evaluated by the allocation committee and found in order, they will then be presented to the MEC for final approval on behalf of the beneficiary.
The details of the officials who have been charged with or arrested for fraud and corruption regarding allocations will be made known at local government level. I thank you.
Chairperson, thank you, and again thanks to the Deputy Minister for her positive response. Nevertheless, in your observation, what kind of fraud or corruption is dominant among government officials in the department?
Chairperson, we know the kind of concerns people have around the issue of our officials having access to subsidies that they are not supposed to. We want to remind people how it started.
It came out of a report in 2006 and 2007. It was because we were not using Persal, which is the government employment system, to check them. Now we are using that. We are able to detect these people who are defrauding government. What is important to know is that, to date, we have ensured that we get government's money from these fraudsters.
A number of people have been investigated, and the government is on track in ensuring that those people pay back the money they took from government by fraud. I thank you.
Chairperson, thank you very much. Deputy Minister, out of these people who were arrested, how many are serving a prison sentence for fraud and corruption?
Chairperson, what we can say here is that we had 2 194 cases in total. Nine hundred of those cases went to court; 735 were convictions. We are in the process of getting government's money back to our coffers. We are doing our work. We don't want to see people in prison; we want to see people being rehabilitated, hon Dennis Bloem. I thank you.
Measures to assess whether and to ensure that occupants of state-subsidised houses are the intended beneficiaries
26. Mr M P Sibande (ANC) asked the Minister of Human Settlements:
Whether his department has undertaken an assessment of whether the persons that are currently living in state-subsidised houses are the intended beneficiaries; if not, why not; if so, (a) what is the extent of the problem, (b) what measures are in place to curb the problem and (c) how many public servants have been identified so far?