Cape Town - The government has so far spent R927m on repairing or rebuilding sub-standard government houses in this financial year, Human Settlements Minister
Tokyo Sexwale said on Wednesday.
The figure includes the cost of demolishing and rebuilding 1 144 houses in six provinces, half of them in Mpumalanga, Sexwale said in reply to a parliamentary question by the Democratic Alliance.
In the Eastern Cape, 220 units were bulldozed and rebuilt.
Sexwale said that province spent a total of R76.25m fixing 1463 faulty state houses out of a target of 2 192.
The Northern Cape spent R6.8m on repairing 129 houses and R5.7m on demolishing and rebuilding 69 houses.
The minister had set aside R1.3bn of human settlement's budget of roughly R16bn for repairs to poor quality government housing.
His special advisor Chris Vick said this was in line with a commitment to ensure that government houses were "of an acceptable quality".
"We are optimistic that improvements to the procurement and quality control systems will reduce the need for rectification going forward," he said.
Vick added that the majority of houses being repaired were either built before the National Home Builders' Registration Council (NHBRC) was fully operational and therefore in a position to ensure proper quality control, or dated from a time when houses built under the People's Housing Process were not covered by the NHBRC's quality-control process.