SALE OF GOVT HOUSES STILL ON – PS

MBABANE – Government has finally shed light on the progress of the sale of government houses.

The Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Clifford Mamba, has said the policy enacted to ensure the sale of government houses still stood and there was a process which was currently being followed. This follows a question from Nhlambeni Member of Parliament (MP), Manzi Zwane, posed to the Housing Ministry’s controlling officer on the progress of the sale of government houses during a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) sitting yesterday. “We were once informed that the ministry would engage in an exercise of selling government houses in order to gain revenue, what is the current stance or progress on this?” he asked.

The proposal of the sale of government houses was introduced by the Minister of Finance, Neal Rijkenberg, last year as a way for government to gain revenue. When motivating this project, it was stated that calculations had projected revenue, once selected houses were sold, amounting to around E480 million. He further said nationally there were a total of about 1 200 properties belonging to government. The PS in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development said the process they were currently rounding up was the surveying of the houses as this was not done when the houses were constructed. “Government in the past used to construct houses based on the idea that the land was owned by it and would gather cement and make bricks and start building. There was no construction based on what a survey reported, for example maybe a two-by-two measurement and so forth.

Evaluations

“However, when you now want to calculate the value and know the measurement of the property as well as the constructed building, there is a need for evaluations, to know that the property as a whole including the land is worth how much exactly. All of the properties belonging to government had not been surveyed and were simply constructed, therefore, we had to start up the process of surveying,” he said. The controlling officer said unfortunately the ministry’s Survey Department was extensively busy yet they conducted surveys nationwide.
“The process, therefore, has not gone as fast as we initially hoped. However, a lot has been done, soon you will be informed of houses government has sold and evaluations as well, and government has evaluators in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Energy. Looking at the number of houses which needed evaluations, we then considered engaging private evaluators so that the process is sped up,” said Mamba.

He said the issue with engaging private evaluators was that money had to be forked out, however, when we received the budget for the evaluators COVID-19 pandemic took centre stage and the money was reallocated. “Please be at ease, the sale of the houses will soon be revealed before the end of this term of Parliament, to see just how far government has gone with that. The process was a bit delayed but the work will soon be evident,” he said.

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