Houses built on illegal infill stands in Chitungwiza will be demolished, Parliament was told yesterday by acting town clerk Fungai Mbetsa.
Mbetsa was appearing before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Natural Resources, Environment and Tourism chaired by Tsholotsho South MP Maxwell Dube to speak on service delivery in the town.
He said the houses were built with the full knowledge of council which allocated the stands unprocedurally.
The acting Town Clerk, whose administration started work on January 30, was responding to a question by Murewa West MP Ward Nezi who wanted to know if council would regularise the illegal houses.
“We have done a report on this issue of illegal stands and we now know what is wrong or right and what needs to be done, and in terms of that report – in cases where houses are in a wrong road servitude, we have no option except to remove that house because the road will need to be extended,” Mbetsa said.
“Those houses on top of sewage pipes will also be removed because that pipe will have to be repaired one way or the other and we will need to give way to service delivery, and it is the same with houses built on top of electricity cables – all this needs to be corrected.”
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Asked by Chitungwiza South MP Misheck Shoko to confirm if the allocation of the stands was done with the full knowledge of council, he said:
“I can confirm that council was aware of what was happening, but council was not doing anything about it. To a certain extent, council was even facilitating some of these things,” he said.
Mbetsa told the committee that demolition of those houses will however, be a process that must be handled “meticulously”.