New BHC scheme to avail 750 houses
Staff Writer | Friday March 11, 2016 13:27
The first phase of the scheme, which will commence this month, will comprise 156 units at Tsholofelo Extension, which will be followed by 480 planned to commence by end of March this year, and another 114 units, which are planned to start by April 2016.
Addressing parliamentarians this week, the Minister of Lands and Housing Prince Maele said the initiative will help Batswana who cannot afford rentals from the private market to own houses.
“In addition to promoting home ownership, youth housing scheme has also been introduced to reduce shortage of accommodation among youth who cannot afford rentals from the private market,” said Maele.
He said the integraded poverty alleviation and housing scheme (IPAHS) continues to take the less privileged Batswana out of poverty and give them dignified life.
“Although it seems to be very slow in terms of housing construction, the outcomes of the scheme in terms of employment creation and income generation are visible and very promising,” he said.
Maele said there are 19 projects on commercial production countrywide which have enrolled a total of 284 beneficiaries.
In addition to the 19 projects, two other replica projects are under construction and it is expected that upon completion they will also enrol 20 to 30 beneficiaries per project.
A total of 168 beneficiaries have built houses for their families from allowances earned from proceeds of these projects.
“In order to make the programme more effective, government took a decision to revamp this scheme by among other things availing funds to capacitate funds to capacitate projects with transport and machinery, training of the technical officers on marketing strategies to empowered them run the projects better,” he said.
Initially the corporation was to build 1,000 housing units this year and for another three years, in which one quarter of the units goes to the youth and the remaining units go to the rest of Batswana eligible for the scheme.
The scheme, which will be piloted first in Gaborone, will later extend to Francistown and Palapye respectively--where demand for housing is high.