Chiefs to be allocated land

Munyaradzi Musiiwa Midlands Correspondent
THE Ministry of Lands and Rural Settlement will prioritise chiefs in the ongoing land allocation and redistribution exercise which is being conducted concurrently with the farm downsizing programme. Midlands chief lands officer Mr Joseph Shoko said the ministry would allocate all 45 chiefs land in the redistribution exercise which started in the province following an order by Government to downsize farms to the maximum recommended sizes.
“We are going to allocate all the chiefs in the Midlands Province farms in the ongoing farm redistribution exercise.

“This follows the farm downsizing that we are currently conducting to pave way for the allocation. At the moment we are still identifying and downsizing farms before redistributing land.

“We are engaging owners of farms whose sizes are above the maximum recommended sizes,” said Mr Shoko.
Midlands has earmarked more than 50 farms for downsizing in the wake of 12 000 people seeking land.

Mr Shoko said the province had also witnessed a smooth transition in the collection of land rentals from local authorities to the ministry following a Government directive and had already started collecting the money from smallholder farmers.

Cabinet recently approved the takeover of the collection of land rentals and unit tax from all A1 and A2 farmers following reports that some rural district councils (RDCs) were abusing the funds.
Mr Shoko said the ministry had started collecting land rentals following the Government directive and farmers had responded swiftly.

He said the levies would only be collected from beneficiaries of State land while those with title deeds would be spared.
“We have started collecting land rentals and people are more than willing to pay the rentals. On the first day we collected rentals from more than 150 people in Zvishavane and we did not face any resistance. People are co-operating,” he said.

Government recently introduced levies for land holders that saw A1 farmers supposed to pay $15 per year, $10 of which is land rental while $5 is unit tax that goes to RDCs. A2 farmers pay $5 per hectare per annum, $3 of which is land rental while $2 is unit tax.

Government has resettled 145 775 A1 farmers on 5,979 million ha of land and 18 289 A2 farmers on 2,978 million ha of land.