BULAWAYO City Council says it has no immediate plans to demolish illegal structures in the city before identifying alternative accommodation for the residents likely to be affected by the clean-up exercise.
MTHANDAZO NYONI OWN CORRESPONDENT
The government last week embarked on a demolition exercise targeting illegally-built houses and tuck-shops in Ruwa and Damofalls in Harare and warned that the programme would be rolled out to all urban centres countrywide.
Bulawayo mayor Martin Moyo told our Bulawayo Bureau on Wednesday that the council currently had no plans to carry a similar blitz in the city.
“As council, we do not have such a programme for demolishing illegal structures in the city,” Moyo said.
“We do not even talk or think about the issue. Those people in Killarney are just squatting in the open and we are still looking at ways of relocating them and not destroying their structures.
“Just imagine if you destroy those structures where those people will go.”
Bulawayo has a number of illegally-built structures mushrooming on the outskirts of the city mostly in Killarney and Ngozi Mine, a refuse dumping site next to Cowdray Park.
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In 2005, the government embarked on a massive, but widely condemned demolition exercise dubbed “Operation Murambatsvina” which left an estimated 700 000 people homeless.
