The City of Tshwane plans to formalise eight informal settlements before the end of June and afford thousands of households with permanent stands.
This was announced by mayor Randall Williams during his state of the city address yesterday, where he said a total of 52 settlements would be formalised in three years.
This will see informal settlements in Ga-Rankuwa Unit 15, Klerksoord Ext 32, Mabopane Ext 11, Nellmapius Ext 22, Pienaarspoort Ext 20 and 21, Soshanguve Block T and Stinkwater Ext 10 becoming formalised and receiving basic services.
Williams said the metro currently has a total of 227 informal settlements spread across its seven regions with an estimated 345,710 households living in those settlements.
"The city has recently approved the Tshwane Informal Settlements Strategy, which seeks to provide a clear short, medium and long-term plan that will guide the incremental upgrading of informal settlements in Tshwane," Williams said.
He said the strategy will be largely funded through the Upgrading of Informal Settlements Partnership Grant and will be focused on providing basic services like water, sewerage infrastructure and electricity in informal settlements.
"A total of 60 upgrading plans were developed for implementation in the short-to-medium term. A total of eight informal settlements are targeted for formalisation in the township establishment stage this financial year," Williams said.
Tshwane is one of the metros that has been most affected by the mushrooming of informal settlements, especially closer to industrial areas and shopping centres which provide job opportunities.
Williams said the city planned to formalise 19 informal settlements in the next financial year. "The areas targeted for formalisation in the next three years will see 72,880 households provided with formal and permanent stands," Williams said.
Williams also announced that the A Re Yeng Bus Rapid Transit operations will be expanded with a route from the CBD to Menlyn – to be operational by the end of next month.
The mayor also said the city is expanding its WiFi programme with 665 new free WiFi zone sites that have been installed and another 20 planned to be implemented soon.
"We would like to remind our residents that the current administration decided to increase the daily quota to 1GB of data per device per day and to provide uncapped access to research and educational sites," Williams said.
Tshwane ANC leader Dr Kgosi Maepa said there was nothing to celebrate in the state of the city address as most of the programmes Williams spoke about were initiated by the previous ANC administration.
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