Update

PLETTENBERG BAY NEWS - The end seems to be in sight for New Horizons' housing woes as work on the area's housing development project kicked off last week.

New Horizons residents have been lobbying for housing for the area for about two decades - pleas they believed had fallen on deaf ears for many years, finally sparking protest action in 2018.

Along with other communities, residents participated in violent protest actions in June and July that year, which brought the town to a near standstill. Since then several protests over among others, delays in getting a housing development off the ground, have sporadically broken out.

Over the past 15 years the municipality has built more than 3 000 reconstruction and development programme (RDP) houses, of which New Horizons received only 62 in 2016. The municipality finally acquired a portion of land in Ebenezer in October 2019. 

The land has been earmarked for about 1 500 sites for the construction of housing and infrastructure development. Portion 20 in Ebenezer was also purchased in 2016 and it is on this land that the housing development started last week.

Bitou mayor Peter Lobese said the project came after many years of struggling to acquire land, waiting for its registration and environmental impact assessments (EIA). "As a council, we prioritised this housing project and the one of Qolweni when we came into office in August 2016. We are very happy to see both projects coming off the ground after many challenges we faced," Lobese said.

Work on the New Horizons housing project finally got under way.

'The place is buzzing'
Lobese appealed to the community and its leaders to work with the municipality so that the development could be accelerated and delivered on time. "The place is buzzing and workers are on site working on installing bulk infrastructure that is essential for the building of the 1 600 top structures on this land."

Deputy Mayor and Community Services portfolio chairman Sandiso Gcabayi said that there had been good cooperation between the municipality and the Western Cape Department of Human Settlements, and this would accelerate housing delivery to the people of New Horizons.

He added that all the compliance documents of the contract are now in place and the site camp is being set up. "It is all systems go. The excavation for the sewerage works is almost complete. By the end of this week, the process to install storm water [infrastructure] will commence," Gcabayi said.

New Horizons Concerned Residents Forum spokesperson Claude Terblanche said the community is very happy with the latest developments, but that they remain cautiously optimistic. 

"Residents are just hoping that this is not just a political ploy before the upcoming elections. History has unfortunately shown that these concerns are legitimate," Terblanche said.

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