National home building regulator visits rural areas

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The National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC) will visit rural and far flung areas as part of its efforts to increase accessibility and service delivery.

During the roadshow, two mobile office units will travel to the provinces assisting consumers and home builders, who are unable to access its products and services in the main urban centres.

The mobile office units are equipped with the latest technology that enables the NHBRC to remotely attend to consumer complaints, while offering technical assistance, homebuilder registrations, home enrolment, training of home builders and consumer awareness.

NHBRC business services executive Thitinti Moshoeu said the council is concerned about the low levels of awareness with regards to home owners or housing consumers.

“Consumers need to be aware of their rights and obligations. The main objective of acquiring these mobile office units is to take NHBRC services to the people to assist and protect housing consumers from being exposed to contractors who deliver housing units of substandard design, workmanship and the use of poor quality building materials,” said Moshoeu.

Many people, especially those in rural areas, have little knowledge about the NHBRC and its services.

“Equally, those who know about the NHBRC have to travel long distances in order to access our services, which can be costly and time consuming. This led to our strategic endeavour to launch the mobile office units as a measure to remedy and circumvent these realities,” Moshoeu said.

The NHBRC is mandated to protect the interests of housing consumers and to ensure that builders comply with the building industry standards by using quality approved materials during construction.

The two mobile office units are scheduled to travel to all the nine provinces with a dedicated NHBRC team.

The mobile units are currently in Limpopo and the Northern Cape for the month of July. They will move to the North West and Western Cape in August.