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Harare City Council cracks whip on subletting tenants

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Harare City Council is cracking the whip on tenants that are subletting rented municipal properties to third parties.

Harare City Council is cracking the whip on tenants that are subletting rented municipal properties to third parties.

BY SILENCE CHARUMBIRA

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Council has since started engaging the sitting tenants to regularise their occupancy, in a move that is expected to cause commotion at markets like Mupedzanhamo and Magaba, where the majority of occupants are subletting.

Council spokesperson Michael Chideme said the city was inviting the sitting tenants to approach their offices to have their occupancy regularised.

The regularisation, Chideme said, would result in the lessees who were receiving rentals from sitting tenants losing occupancy.

“Harare City Council is inviting all people renting council properties from third parties to visit our offices and have their occupancy regularised. The properties include houses, apartments and business premises,” he said in a statement.

“This effectively means all people subletting council properties have lost occupancy to the properties because it is illegal to sublet.”

Chideme revealed some of the lessees were based outside the country and receiving rentals from their tenants, but failing to make remittances to council.

“It has come to the attention of the council that the current tenants are paying to the registered lessees, but are not paying the same to council. Some of the lessees are now resident outside Zimbabwe, while others have properties elsewhere,” he said.

Council has over the years been bleeding due to non-payment of rentals by its lessees at some of its properties, thereby crippling its revenue streams.

The majority of properties and markets have also been used by politicians to whip residents into line by threatening them with eviction if they do not support Zanu PF with Mbare-based militia group Chipangano being the force behind most of the activities.

Workers have in the past raised alarm over several such malpractices with Harare Municipal Workers’ Union executive chairman Cosmas Bungu blasting management for laxity in a letter to the mayor early this year.

“The City is losing millions of dollars in uncollected revenue due to lack of management dexterity on the enforcement of collection and termination of non-performing leases where it appears on the referrals to the respective authorities. The cases die a natural death since there is no action against the defaulters,” Bungu said in the letter.