Speaking at the inaugural Community Schemes Ombud Service (CSOS) Indaba in Johannesburg last week, Minister of Human Settlements, Mmamoloko Kubayi, said that the growing community housing schemes sector needs to be transformed to be more inclusive on various levels.
According to the minister, South Africa has an estimated 70,000 community schemes - which include high-rise residential areas, townhouse complexes, and gated villages.
The community schemes economy is vast, and the services it seeks, like security and gardening, play a significant role in job creation. This is particularly true since many of these services are obtained from small and medium-sized enterprises.
"These services are often sourced from companies that are known to those that manage the schemes, which does not allow for other players to enter the market," she said that for the sector to transform, this and other practices need to change. "We need to put measures in place to ensure that a procurement approach that gives opportunities to emerging black SMMEs becomes mandatory," she explained.
Another area that needs to be focused on is managing agents. Saying: "Transparency is important in everything that we do and equally so is the transformation of the Managing Agents sector."
In an effort towards transforming the Managing Agents industry, the CSOS signed a Memoranda of Understanding with Pretor, MidCity, and Trafalgar, to collaborate on the development of emerging Black Managing Agents so that they also can play a meaningful role in the sector. Additionally this collaboration must yield tangible results and the CSOS has to ensure that these emerging Black Managing Agents are integrated into the sector and do real work.
