Tswapong residents fight for homes

CHANDAPIWA BAPUTAKI
Staff Writer | Monday April 26, 2010 00:00

The residents have petitioned the head office in Geneva asking to have their debt, amounting to P1.8 million, written off.

Since 1992, Habitat for Humanity has built about 2,450 houses for low-income earners who could not get loans from banks or the Self Help Housing Agency (SHHA). According to the finance and administration manager, Moeti Joel, a house cannot be built for a person who has a source of income but has been found to be overwhelmed by other commitments.

He said there is a procedure that they have to follow if they were to write off a debt for people who had been proved unable to pay.

'Even those people who want their debts to be written off right now cannot prove that when they got into agreement with us they had proven to us that they could not afford to pay us back. They just stopped paying last year when they embarked on the petitions,' Joel said.

He said that they carry out assessments based on whether there is a need for accommodation for the person applying and whether their income is sufficient without many commitments that could overwhelm the applicant in the future.

'We also assist those who might have started building the structure and then have problems completing them. Just like those who need a new house, we look at the ratio of net salary compared to other commitments,' he said.

He further pointed out that most of their clients are pensioners who never give them any problems. The minimum installment, according to Joel, is P109.50, while the maximum is P450, which is the price of three bags of cement according to PPC prices per month for a period of 10 years.

He admitted that while many of the clients are paying well, there are some who default. 'Such people normally come to us and state their cases so that we can restructure their loans,' he said.

He further explained that the organisation could only write off the debts in cases where the breadwinner who was paying passes away leaving young children.

He said in cases where there are other family members alive, but no one stays in the home of the deceased, they request the family to rent the house out to pay the debt.

Habitat for Humanity depends on international and local donors for funds to continue building the houses for those in need of accommodation. Joel stated that the major local donor is Debswana who contributed close to P1million to build houses for people next to the Jwaneng Mine in Maokane, Seise and Mokhumba.

Joel revealed that they have programmes targeted at the destitute where government pays the loans.

'We have a programme we are running with the Kweneng and Southern District Councils to build houses for the destitute and in that case government pays,' he said.

'We can only advise those people from the Tswapong villages to come and discuss their problems with us in the office as per their individual situations.

We do listen to people if they are having problems catching up with their installments,' he said.