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Mr Pawadyira

Lovemore Meya Herald Correspondent
Chitungwiza Municipality has so far collected $17 000 in penalties from people who illegally acquired residential stands. The council is trying to recover about $13 million for stands that were issued illegally from 2013 to date. It only collected a paltry $1,2 million. The caretaker commission’s chairperson Mr Madzudzo Pawadyira recently invited beneficiaries to approach council with payment plans and to have their structures regularised. Chitungwiza Municipality town planner Mr Conrad Muchesa told The Herald that they are making strides to regularise the illegal structures..

“We have so far collected $17 000 from beneficiaries after the announcement to have the structures regularised.  At the moment we have been given four sites, two of them in Zengeza 4 and on one of these we have around 160 houses of which less than 65 were approved. We asked beneficiaries of the other houses to engage an engineer to assess the suitability of areas close to the stream and on wetland,” said Mr Muchesa.

“The other site (PaGomba) was condemned during the previous audit report. The remaining two sites in Unit P and O are yet to be looked at. On these three sites we can come up with 500 stands to take into the system.” Mr Muchesa said there are still 23 sites to be visited to assess their suitability for regularisation.

“In these three sites, 1 500 stands were identified which are semi-finished structures. We are having enquiries from the community on the progress, but the problem is that the process is slow because some people are not forthcoming. The beneficiaries were asked to pay a fine of $1 500 that will be channelled towards the servicing of their stands. We are coming up with a layout plan which will be submitted to the Ministry of Local Government, National Housing and Public Works for approval,” he said. Mr Muchesa said the regularisation process is going to be undertaken in phases.

“We are dealing with this exercise in phases. We want to include the buildings that are already complete in our database. We have possibly around 8 000 structures that are one-roomed or two-roomed cottages and partially built houses. These are either in areas which at first glance might not be suitable for regularisation, but first we are taking those which we are saying are low-hanging fruits which council can benefit from.” He said the process should be complete within 12 months.