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As First Lady Amai Grace Mugabe noted last week, urban councils are falling short by not stopping the building of illegal structures while these are still in early stages, say the foundation trenches, rather than waiting until a house has been finished or almost finished before finding out it should never have been built and must be demolished without compensation.

The councils might not notice, or be expected to notice, a single illegal cottage being built behind a legal house or a new carport or a lot of other minor unapproved work. But the First Lady was referring particularly to the problems raised by the land barons, people selling large numbers of plots on land that they do not own or which can never be built on. And here the hive of building activity cannot be done in secret.

Someone from the relevant council should be able to notice what is happening when it starts and order the required investigation. In Harare and most other urban councils, a lot of services are hived off to district offices, each with someone presumed to be competent in charge.

Surely these officers and their senior subordinates should know their districts well and, in the ordinary course of their duties, will presumably see a sudden flurry of building on land that they suspect has not been zoned for housing and in any case has no water pipes or sewers.

A quick check and if the suspicions are correct the conned residents can be told and all they will have lost will be the first instalment or two to the land baron, which they might well get back in court, plus a lot of sweat in digging the foundation trenches. They can easily start again on legal land.

Part of the problem, besides official incompetence, is the structure of many municipalities where responsibilities and functions are placed in a multitude of non-communicating departments. So there is a strong chance that if a district officer sees development he assumes that the relevant authorities have approved it.

The answer of course is to ensure the districts are kept posted on all land planning and building decisions in their area. Indeed it might well be a good idea that everyone wanting to do anything in a particular ward should first go to the district office.

In many cases, the query or complaint can be dealt with there and then. In more complex matters at least the local office knows what is going on. The inquirer gets the advantage that they are referred to the right person in the right department and are not expected to wander from office to office trying to get help.

Councils also need to educate their residents. All new buildings usually require at least three inspections as they are erected, starting with foundations and plumbing connections. If residents know they must go to the inspector at that stage they could find out then that the assurances they received that all the paperwork was done and plans approved were among the many lies told by the land baron. Again just wasted foundations.

Councils need to understand that those conned by land barons are the victims, often taken in by plausible lies, and are not the criminals. If councils take a little bit more care they can help these victims.

Education campaigns at the district offices, where people can be told what they need to do before building and warned about conmen, would be a start. Council staff simply stopping while they are on other duties and inquiring at a building site if all the paperwork has been done will quickly detect the forgeries and frauds of smooth-speaking land barons.

None of this is difficult and a lot of suffering can be eliminated with just a bit of effort and initiative.