Human Settlements
Whether his Department has measures in place to minimise the possibility of acts of corruption occurring in the allocation of houses; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details?
My department has put the following measures in place to minimise instances of corruption occurring in the allocation of houses:
The development of a web-based platform for municipalities to capture and record applicant information on the Western Cape Housing Demand Database – (WCHDDB). Through this platform, each of the 24 non-metro municipalities has essentially been provided with access to a web-based system for electronically managing their own housing demand data. The system has the following access controls:
• Limited user access with unique usernames and password to prevent unauthorised updating of data. This measure prevents any official from accessing the database. User access to municipal officials is managed by my department.
• Separation of roles and responsibilities of duties in the WCHDDB by means of different user profiles to ensure:
o quality control by housing managers
o limited access to update critical fields i.e. Date of registration and ID numbers.
This measure ensures that only senior municipal officials can change registration dates or ID numbers. The official must indicate in the notes field the reason for the changes. This is to ensure that an audit trail on user activity is recorded for each action on the database.
Through this measure my department is able to monitor any activity on the database.
The City of Cape Town has similar measures in place for its housing demand data base.
