He is now in the same position as about a million ordinary South Africans who have tried to build a house.
So our mate Tokyo picks up his ministerial cell phone and calls the contractor:
“Hi George, it’s Tokyo,” he says as contractor George answers the phone.
“Nice to hear from you, bud. Howzit going?” comes the friendly reply.
“Well George, we’ve got a problem with the 2,000 houses that you’ve built for us in Tarkastad. . .”
“There’s no problem there, my teams are working on it as we speak. I’m actually driving to the site now so don’t worry at all. Anything that’s wrong will be repaired immediately, you have my word. . . .” comes a reply, but Tokyo interjects: “Hey George, you know that’s just rubbish and I want to meet with you in my office today,” says an already exasperated Tokyo.
“What did you say? Sorry I can’t hear you. The line is breaking up. Repeat please,” comes a voice.
Then the line goes dead.
So Tokyo phones back. The line rings and rings. Then the voice message comes alive: “Hi, this is the voice of George. The rest of him is not available. So leave a message and he’ll call you back.”
Tokyo’s no dummy: he’s been in the business world and he knows. He knows not to use “private number” or “unknown number” and calls off a different cell phone with caller identification.
The call is answered immediately: “Hi, George here,” comes the prompt answer.
“Hey George, you’re avoiding my calls. It’s Tokyo. . .”
The line goes dead.
He dials again and gets an immediate response: “The number you dialled is not available on the Vodacom/MTN/CellC network. Please try again later.”
The SIM card is floating down the Jukskei (choose any river you like).
No problem for Tokyo. He calls the National Home Builders’ Registration Council (NHBRC).
“They can solve the problem” he thinks as he holds the phone until it stops ringing. Tokyo’s not too proud to make his own calls and all he actually wants to do is get hold of the contractor so he can have a physical address that is not “Private Bag X6 Midrand”.
The phone rings at the NHBRC.
For minutes and then almost hours.
Tokyo has a meeting to get to so he asks his personal assistant to call the NHBRC for him and gets into his very own Blue Light Cavalcade to take him to the new contract that’s got to be signed today for more low cost houses.
He is late.
He’s late because he’s been trying to get hold of the NHBRC.
So the cavalcade’s justified.
His PA phones him back hours later: “Sorry boss. The NHBRC says the contractor’s membership actually lapsed last year, so they can’t help. The last address they have is somewhere in Polokwane.”
“Tracing agents,” says Tokyo and phones his mate Pravan and asks him to please track down the contractor who has been registered as a taxpayer for the past few years.
Pravan comes back to him a bit later that evening (Tokyo works hard, as does Pravan) and says that unfortunately the close corporation that he mentioned was liquidated a year ago.
The members were sequestrated too. So there’s nobody who cannot help.
Hey Tokyo, welcome to the real world, mate.
Because that’s what we ordinary South Africans have been dealing with for years.
The NHBRC does nothing except collect our money.
The builders liquidate their companies, sequestrate themselves and start all over again, getting government contracts (or private contracts) that are utterly meaningless when it comes to enforcing the law.
Let me say that I applaud you for at least walking down the road of trying to sue, and recover in a civil action, the money that has been paid to these crooks.
Please, for our sake, will you succeed and then tell us how you did it?
The sad reality is that you have little, if any, chance of collecting any loot from the dudes who have already taken the government’s money and bought a couple of new Mercedes ML’s for their families.
We’ve been struggling with this situation for years and we’ve been telling you (or, more correctly those that went before you) that there is a huge problem when it comes to building houses.
Those that went before you have ignored the problem.
In fact, the existing legislation forces us to enrol our houses with the NHBRC even though it cannot do anything at all for any of us.
And you’ll soon find out that they can do nothing for you either.
So unless you mobilise government to change the laws and allow private insurance companies to step in and provide some real insurance against shoddy building work you will be in the same frustrating position that we ordinary South Africans find ourselves in every day.
In fact, I think you should immediately appoint a few private sector consultants (who are battling to get any work anyway) to your tender adjudication board so that the fly-by-night rascals can be eradicated before they even get an audition or an audience at the site.
And then, Tokyo, you can take the “war-chest” of cash that the NHBRC has captured from us all and put it to work on a real insurance policy that will rectify the many thousands of problems that truly do exist with the houses we’ve had to fix ourselves.
I admit that your problem is a bit bigger than ours.
We try to build a house so that we can live in it.
You (or your predecessor) is claiming money on 2,500 rubbish houses just for starters.
So I don’t envy you at all.
What you have (we don’t) is the government’s clout on your side.
But I suspect that you, like us, will soon discover that most claims against failed builders are a complete waste of time and money.
If you’ve experienced our frustration then maybe, just maybe, you’ll do something to change it.
Because it needs to change.
So you have our full blessing to deal with those contractors, who’ve thrown their SIM cards into the Jukskei, have a Private Bag physical address and who have been liquidated, sequestrated and own as many assets as a stone.
Because that’s the harsh reality of claiming anything from a house builder who has built rubbish houses.
Oh, and next time, appoint contractors who can do the work.
*Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com. The content of his columns constitutes his personal opinion and doesn’t pretend to be facts or advice. Contact him at paddy@neomail.co.za.
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