Cape Town - They had hoped to see out their sunset years in houses fit for heroes after they served the nation during the struggle against apartheid, but barely five years after moving into a new housing estate in Belhar, military veterans are disappointed with their crumbling homes.
The veterans, who live in a 102home housing project built in 2018 for the government by Calgro M3, a private construction company, took reporters on a tour of several houses which featured cracked and mouldy walls, which they blame on poor-quality construction.
Chairperson of the residents committee, Max Ntanyana said many of the residents who lived in the houses with their children and grandchildren had been diagnosed with chest infections, which they said were as a result of constantly breathing in the mould in their homes.
Ntanyana said the houses started falling apart in 2019, just after they moved in, and that they had written letters to the national and provincial Human Settlements departments with little by way of response.
“Every now and then workers from the construction company show up in response to our complaints, but they just plaster over the cracks to cover them up instead of repairing them.
“It is like they are putting Colgate in the cracks because within a month, the cracks come back.
“They have painted these houses twice, claiming that the paint removes the mould, which then gets worse,” said Ntanyana.
He said sewage had been seeping out of the drains around the estate since last year.
At one of the houses where the walls showed signs of leaks from the ceiling, another of the veterans on the committee, Basil Mtungane, said that water was seeping down the walls of the buildings because of leaky roofs.
“The leaks with water spilling down the wall means the householder cannot plug anything into the sockets for fear of what might happen,” Mtungane said.
The provincial infrastructure department confirmed that it had received complaints from residents and instructed the contractor to repair any defects “which form part of the snag list post the completion of a development.”
The department said where it was found that building standards had not been met, the developer would be liable for repairs.
Allistiar Langson, the managing director of Calgro M3 Developments, said: “Other than one house where we are aware of where a structural defect existed, we differ with the opinion that the houses in question were poorly built.
“At our request and to address these allegations made by certain homeowners, the National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC) did a thorough investigation on the alleged structural cracks, which were instead found to be hairline/settlement cracks.”
He said these could be remedied through maintenance and painting of the houses, which was the responsibility of the owners.
As for the mould, Langson said it occurred mostly in smaller houses with insufficient ventilation and was worse in winter, particularly” in south-facing houses, owing to increased rainfall and limited sunshine reaching the houses on winter days.”