Africa-Press – Cape verde. The Minister of Infrastructure, Spatial Planning and Housing, stated today, in Praia, that Cape Verde faces a deficit of more than 40 thousand homes in need of rehabilitation in addition to around 14 thousand that need to be built.
Eunice Silva made these statements to the press at the conference held to present the housing program, within the scope of the Conference Cycle promoted by the Government of Cape Verde, aimed at detailing the sectoral aspects included in the State Budget proposal for the economic year 2024.
“We went from 2016 to 2023 and the prospects for 2024/2025, we took stock of the cooperation we do with municipal councils, through program contracts, the number of homes we managed to rehabilitate, which falls within the qualitative deficit which is Cape Verde’s biggest problem. Therefore, we have a deficit of more than 40 thousand houses that need to be rehabilitated and we have around 14 thousand to build”, explained the government official.
In parallel with the rehabilitation and construction of housing, the minister stressed, there are also two fronts: the elimination of shacks on the islands of Sal and Boa Vista and the ‘Casa para Todos’ program. Currently, the latter presents 40% physical execution and 60% financial execution, added to a major intervention in the city of Praia with the “habitat regeneration program”.
“With the municipal councils we only rehabilitate the ceiling, our commitment is to solve the ceiling problem, and we have another program here in Praia which is habitat regeneration, where we not only solve the ceiling problem, but also create access to water and electricity, building bathrooms and kitchens”, said Eunice Silva.
As mentioned by the minister, the ‘Habitat Regeneration’ program, which will benefit a total of 750 families, was completed in Safende and is in the final phase in the Calabaceira area. Its continuation is scheduled for 2024, covering a total of 22 neighborhoods in the capital, with an estimated investment of almost 600 thousand contos.
At this moment, the minister pointed out, around 660 thousand square meters of requalified areas have been identified in Cape Verde through the PRRA program (Requalification, Rehabilitation and Accessibility Program), within the scope of the Government’s direct interventions, whether through construction contracts, or through municipal councils in the requalification of neighborhoods.
In relation to the rehabilitation of houses, 886 thousand escudos were invested with municipal councils nationwide and in urban requalification it was 1,600,000,000 escudos, he pointed out.
“I do not assume the indicative value of reducing the deficit, because we still do not have studies that allow us to combine what the Government does and what the chamber does, we have a good partner, UN Habitat and INE, which supports us on several fronts of planning. studies, but in fact we need to collect from everyone who operates in the housing sector to bring this information”, concluded Eunice Silva.
He also regretted the fact that the money for the housing sector comes directly from the State coffers, and there is still a debt to be paid relating to the Casa para Todos program, so part of the resource that could be allocated to housing in Cape Verde at this time is intended for this debt.
In this sense, the minister emphasized that the tourist tax is intended for the relocation program and eradication of shacks on the island of Sal and Boa Vista.
For his part, the Minister of Family, Inclusion and Social Development, Fernando Elísio Freire, recalled that the executive decided at the beginning of the legislature to eliminate extreme poverty in 2026, establishing the “Programa Mais” as responsible for the mobilization of Cape Verdean society to accelerate social inclusion, whose target audience was children and adolescents, people with disabilities, girls and women, the elderly, immigrants, young people without jobs, without training and outside the educational system.
Through the single social register, he added, the most vulnerable families were identified to carry out relocation.
“The impact is that, on the one hand, we are reducing the housing deficit, but on the other hand we are effectively consistently reducing poverty in Cape Verde and in 2015 we had 22.5% of our population in extreme poverty, we closed the in 2022 with 11.4% and in the second quarter of 2023 with 9.4%, this means that the actions are being consistent and targeted at the target audience”, he highlighted.
For 2024 we will have in the “Fundo Mais” around 550 thousand contos of the tourist tax that will be used for the target audiences, he said, highlighting that the housing deficit in the archipelago is still “shocking”.
“We have a huge housing deficit, the need for rehabilitation is overwhelming, but we are ensuring that these interventions are focused on families that are in group 1 and group 2 of the single social registry so that the program can be as successful as we want it to be. Cape Verde”, maintained Elísio Freire.
Finally, the Prime Minister, Ulisses Correia Silva, reiterated that the actions mentioned above cover all islands and all councils in the country, ensuring that the Executive will continue to reduce asymmetries.
“We have the great challenge of reducing the flow of rural exoduses that then reach cities that are not prepared to provide answers and people start to live in a worse situation than they originally did in the places where they wanted to stay, but are unable to do so due to lack of opportunities. ”, declared the Head of State, indicating the importance of integrated policies to provide answers.
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