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National Human Settlements Conference to pave the way for sustainable solutions to housing in South Africa

Issued by National Home Builders Registration Council
Port Elizabeth, Oct 5, 2016

The Minister of Human Settlements, Lindiwe Sisulu, will tomorrow launch the National Human Settlements conference in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape. Themed Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements Begin Today, the conference will bring together various international and local experts and role players to discuss ways in which to tackle the country's housing crisis and consider solutions to human settlements in Africa.

Top of the agenda will be the development of sustainable and environmentally friendly cities and neighbourhoods. The event will also tackle issues such as the role of technology in the development of sustainable human settlements, affordable housing, urbanisation among many others.

Executive Mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, Athol Trollip will welcome participants from around the world before the conference gets under way.

The organising partners of the conference include the Departments of Human Settlements, Science and Technology and Higher Education and Training, The National Home Builders Registrations Council and the Nelson Mandela University.

In setting out the purpose fry the event, the partners highlighted the urgent need for new thinking to ensure that settlements and cities are more transformative, self-sustaining and carbon neutral in services they provide and in the way they function.

This includes alternative sanitation technologies, water provision, energy as well as planning and decision support tools and modelling.

For more information, please contact Molebogeng Taunyane on (011) 317 0070 or [email protected]

The NHBRC

The National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC) is an agency of the Department of Human Settlements which is responsible for the protection of housing consumers and to regulate the home building industry. The NHBRC also offers services such as enrolment of new homes, home builder registration, home building inspections, builder training, geotechnical and materials engineering. In the 2015/16 financial year the NHBRC trained 1623 youth, 256 artisans, 111military veterans and 2464 emerging home builders. Of the total 1 623 youth trained, 65% (1 062) are females and 35% are male. For more information: www.nhbrc.org.za. Twitter: @NHBRC Facebook: NHBRCSA 0800 200 824