Chitungwiza caretaker council chairman Madzudzo Pawadyira has said the town has embarked on a programme to regularise the over 10 000 houses earmarked for demolition following recommendations by a government land audit report.
By Albert Masaka
Pawadyira yesterday met former deputy mayor Frederick Mabamba, who was fired as councillor for ward 25 in 2014 for illegally parcelling out council land.
“I want to breathe life into the system. We are now saying the houses should be allowed in the system. I have talked to him (Mabamba) and we are through,” Pawadyira told NewsDay after the meeting.
The council is also expected to rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars, as Pawadyira said the affected owners of the houses built on undesignated sites would first pay a penalty fee of $1 500 in a process to regularise the stands.
“The fine does not have to be paid all at once. They can build on it until it gets to the total amount needed, that would trigger us to issue a lease,” he said.
“The ones to be regularised are the ones which would ordinarily pass the test of our planning regulations. Those which do not, but are fully built, we will try to find a part-technical part-political solution. There are those which are totally impossible to accommodate and those we will ask the owners to demolish, self-demolition. They will get compensation from whoever sold them the stands.”
A government audit revealed that Mabamba, through his United We Stand Housing Co-operative, was considered as the “chief land baron” in a scam involving the sale of more than 14 000 housing stands to desperate home seekers.
