The City of Joburg has expressed confidence it is winning the fight against building hijackers operating mostly in the inner city of the economic capital.
A high level delegation that included mayor Kabelo Kamwanda, Roads and Transport MMC Kenny Kunene as well as City Manager Floyd Brink visited a building that was gutted down by fire on Sunday morning claiming two lives and rendering scores homeless.
The survivors have been moved to a nearby soccer field where they’re housed in tents while the Express Building has been cordoned off as a scene of a crime (authorities believe the fire was started deliberately during a domestic disagreement)
The municipality said the building is not suitable for occupation and is looking at ways of repurposing it alongside others that hijacked or in bad state.
“Following the last fire the city undertook a process of identifying what we referred to as bad buildings with the intention of rescuing the inhabitants of these buildings. I can say with authority that we have since taken eleven cases to court and out of those eleven we have nine rulings that are in the city’s favour and we have an additional two cases that are pending. What that means is that it would enable the city to then evacuate the residents of those buildings,” said the mayor.
Gwamanda and Brink slammed NGOs who have been legally challenging the metro’s attempts to evacuate and renovate certain buildings.
“It’s an issue for us within the city. We’re looking at different options on how we going to address this and how we going to address this, how to repurpose and rehabilitate or refurbish these buildings but not only individual buildings. We will be looking at them block by block and also look at certain precincts within the area. And that will all form part of our inner city rejuvenation program and we will be approaching other spheres of government that will be able to assist us in terms of funding and also to identify developers in order for us to redevelop certain areas within the inner city and for to mitigate this thing of bad buildings and hijacked buildings,” said Brink.