Cllr Benedicta van Minnen of the City of Cape Town allegation that Minister of Human Settlements Lindiwe Sisulu, MP, “shuts out Cape Town from USDG grant meeting” is baseless and part of grand standing by the City of Cape Town.

The fact is that the Minister through the Secretariat invited Executive Mayors to a meeting to discuss Urban Settlements Development Grant (USDG). The invitation was extended to the Executive Mayors only not Members of Mayoral Committee (MMC).

We are convinced that the City of Cape Town Executive Mayor, Patricia De Lille deliberately abstained from the meeting so that she will not account for the low housing delivery and lack of capacity development in the city’s administration and their obsession of using consultants instead of empowering young black companies.

The Executive Mayor was also running away from explaining why her City is spending money on big companies and ignoring young small black companies. She was also running away from explaining how the funds dedicated for capacity development have not been used for that purpose by the City for the past five years.

She was also running away from explaining among other things sanitation delays in Khayelitsha, Lwandle and Langa and the deviation of funds from community projects to non-core projects of the City like communications and branding initiatives.

The aforementioned are some of the issues the Mayor did not want to face, but we are here, we will await her to come and account.

Enquiries
Ndivhuwo Mabaya 
Cell: 083 645 7838

Issued by the Ministry of Human Settlements