13 Sep 2016

The Botswana Housing Corporation (BHC) is working on rolling out the Installment Purchase Scheme (IPS).

The chief executive officer of the BHC, Mr Reginald Motswaiso revealed this in an interview. 

He said his institution had been tasked with driving some of the key housing initiatives and this included the IPS.

“Government has various schemes that address housing, but along the way, it was realised that there is a gap, as there were people who did not earn enough to qualify for BHC low income housing, but their earnings disqualified them from Self Help Housing Agency (SHHA) threshold. The IPS was thus developed to cater housing for people who earn between P3 000 and P7 000 a month,” Mr Motswaiso said. 

He said, through the IPS, many houses will be built and rented out to citizens, with a quarter reserved for youth. 

Instead of paying normal rental, the monthly payments will be considered as a long-term installment, with the tenant eventually owning the house after a period of up to 25 years.

“The IPS is a bridge that assists Batswana that are struggling to become home owners, as they may not qualify for mortgage loans from the major banks, but are not readily assisted by the low income housing state initiative SHHA,” Mr Motswaiso said. 

He said these houses were slightly larger than normal SHHA houses with two bedrooms and a living room, as well as other regular rooms fitted in.

“Due to space constraints in towns we will be constructing blocks of flats, and in the rural areas we will build from individual yards, but each housing unit will be slightly larger than the normal SHHA house. This will be a form of empowerment,” Mr Motswaiso said.

He said, with the valuation of each housing unit appreciating every year, giving an advantage to those who will be purchasing them, as instead of being tenants who merely pay rent, they will be contributing to owning an assert that will eventually have much greater value than initially was the case.

The Ministry of Lands and Housing developed the IPS and the BHC are implementers, as part of the government’s pledge to take Batswana out of poverty and create jobs for citizens.

Mr Motswaiso said that they are piloting the project in Gaborone, building 750 housing units at Tsholofelo in Broadhurst, Gaborone and at Block 3 in the capital. 

He added that they anticipated over 7 000 temporary jobs to be constructed.  

“These may be temporary jobs, but over a 24 month period, you will have people earning a living engaged in various jobs aligned to construction. When we roll out the scheme to other areas of the country, more jobs will be creates,” Mr Motswaiso said. ENDS