{"id":125041,"date":"2016-05-30T09:04:12","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T07:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=125041"},"modified":"2016-05-30T09:04:12","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T07:04:12","slug":"sa-government-blowing-millions-every-month-on-empty-buildings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/125041\/sa-government-blowing-millions-every-month-on-empty-buildings\/","title":{"rendered":"SA government blowing millions every month on empty buildings"},"content":{"rendered":"

The department of public works is spending millions of rands on the rates and taxes of 2,000 empty and underutilised buildings – 200 of which are listed as being at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n

According to a Parliamentary reply to the DA,\u00a0public works minister Thulas Nxesi said that the department was the custodian of\u00a095,587 buildings and 31,310 pieces of land.<\/p>\n

Of the buildings,\u00a01,939 are either unused\u00a0or unoccupied\u00a0–\u00a0and of the land,\u00a013,043 pieces\u00a0are unused\u00a0or unoccupied.<\/p>\n

The GPS co-ordinates of at least 200 of these buildings points to the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, the DA pointed out.<\/p>\n

\"Department<\/a><\/p>\n

In the reply, Nxesi said that advance invoices are sent to 26 national government departments for rent, amounting to R324.5 million a month, or around R3 billion a year.<\/p>\n

The minister added that on average, R3.9-million a month was paid for municipal rates and taxes on unused buildings, while a further R1 million is spent on municipal services.<\/p>\n

More on wasteful spending<\/h3>\n

Biggest wasteful spenders in SA government<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Leave our \u2018wasteful items\u2019 alone: ANC<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Treasury has barely made a dent in \u2018wasteful\u2019 spending<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The department of public works is spending millions of rands on the rates and taxes of 2,000 empty and underutilised buildings – 200 of which are listed as being at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":74754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-125041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125047,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125041\/revisions\/125047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}