The City says it has spent R2.8 million renovating the exteriors of six double-storey blocks of council flats in Hangberg.
Work on the A, B, C, U, V and W blocks of rental units included servicing and refurbishment of windows.
Between Hout Bay and Atlantis, the rental unit upgrade came at a cost of R9 million for the current financial year.
Stuart Diamond, the Mayco member for assets and facilities management, said the City’s rental units were “home to the poorest of the poor”.
In the previous financial year, the City had spent R50 million renovating its rental units.
The proposed draft budget for 2018/19 was R85 million for further upgrades and maintenance to council rental stock.
“The extensive upgrades project forms part of the City’s asset management plan to improve the condition of the City’s rental stock units. We also call upon our tenants to work with us to maintain their units,” Mr Diamond said.
“While the City does all it can to maintain the external areas of the units, we ask our tenants to take care of the inside of their units as most of them already do.”
Meanwhile, Hangberg community representative, Roscoe Jacobs, this week called on the City to investigate an electricity outage in housing blocks AA to MM in Karbonkel Road.
“We call on the City of Cape Town to investigate the cause of the power outage and ensure that the cause is addressed as a matter of urgency. The outage has also affected the Hout Bay day hospital. This is unacceptable as the day hospital doesn’t have a generator and if and when an emergency occurs, they won’t have electricity,” Mr Jacobs said on Tuesday.
The City’s Mervyn Julie responded that workers were still on site.
“The fault we’re dealing with is intermittent, making it very difficult to pin-point. It is also the reason why the switch did not immediately switch off’ after the call-out action to switch ‘on’,” he said in an email.
“After testing we now know what the problem is, however, it will take some time to repair. Be mindful that the area is not cable fault repair friendly, and we might be facing some challenges. (The) age and route of the cabling might call for new equipment installation (and) informal structures (are) built over cable routes.”
The City was trying its best to ensure that all customers were temporary supplied, but permanent “fix work” would continue.
“We ask that the community be patient and allow our staff to carry out the work without interference.”
