Media Alert: Minister Madikizela to Deliver Opening Remarks for New Programme

The Western Cape Minister of Human Settlements, Bonginkosi Madikizela, will give the opening address to the second Built Environment Support Course (BESP) to be held at Belmont Conference Centre, Belmont Square, Belmont Road, Rondebosch on 4 March 2013.

The course is aimed at councillors, municipal and provincial housing officials and other persons dealing with housing and the built environment.  The course will enable participants to effectively interact with the various planning tools and processes in dealing with projects to achieve sustainable human settlements.

Some of the human settlements challenges include:

• A spatial pattern that is not significantly changing from that created under apartheid;
• Increasing demands for services, especially from the very poor whose ability to pay for those services is often severely compromised;
• Environmental problems that are impacting on carrying capacity, particularly in the fields of water and energy
• A long term trend of diminishing municipal financial sustainability to provide these services and ensure that our settlements are convenient, pleasant and enabling places to live in.
• Public participation in communities often with very different views on what is acceptable urban development;
• Managing vast sums of money;
• Ensuring that everything that is actually built achieves the correct quality;
• Budget and time scale
• Obtaining project approvals through multi-layered, often contradictory, legislation.

Through building capacity with key personnel in the housing and built environment, service delivery is improved. This also has the particular advantage of councillors subsequently being able to clearly communicate to their constituencies the complexities, realities and challenges of human settlements delivery.

The Department of Human Settlement and the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment will present the 5-day Integrated Sustainable Human Settlement Support Training Programme. This is in response to the demand from municipalities in the province for assistance with human settlement development and delivery within the context of changing the apartheid spatial landscape.

All media are invited.

Date: 4 March 2013
Place: Belmont Conference Centre, Belmont Square, Belmont Road, Rondebosch, Cape Town