10 years and R430m later… ‘Lesedi Technical Engineering’ fails to get approval for mega housing project

702’s John Perlman speaks with Sipho Masondo, a journalist at News24.

Listen below:

Despite being paid R430 million, Lesedi Technical Engineering (LTE) Consulting has failed to get essential regulatory approval for the Syferfontein mega housing project.

Housing officials in Gauteng paid the politically connected company to obtain township establishment approval for the proposed project.

Without this approval, construction cannot begin on this project, which has been 10 years in the making.

Masondo says the Department of Human Settlements should have reached out to the City of Johannesburg, which owns the land, before appointing anyone to this project.

That way they could have worked out the logistics of using this land before paying hundreds of millions of rands to LTE.

He adds that the City of Johannesburg says LTE has not even approached them to get the power of attorney which is necessary to get township establishment approval.

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“There is definitely something happening here.”

- Sipho Masondo, Journalist - News24

“It is extremely difficult to arrive at any other conclusion than to the fact that this could just have been a way to extract money from the Department.” 

- Sipho Masondo, Journalist - News24

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