City resolves land dispute

Yeukai Karengezeka Herald Correspondent
The City of Harare has resolved the long-standing dispute between Harare Home Industry Association Trust and Defacto Group over a piece of land in Mbare that the trust had been allocated by council to develop business units on a Build-Operate-and-Transfer basis.

The dispute, which has been raging for the past 10 years, arose after Defacto invaded the land and developed it without the approval of the local authority.

Minutes of a recent meeting of the Informal Sector Committee indicated that the council had met the two parties and advised them that it had divided the land into two.

“The land had been divided into two sections “A” and “B”. Section “A” being that of Harare Home Industry Association Trust and “B” of the Defacto Group,” reads the minutes.

“A layout plan for the sites is now available and it had been established that Harare Home Industry Association Trust had occupied 1 947 hectares and Defacto Group 2 221 hectares of land.”

The committee noted that the trust would be paying a monthly bill of $2 900, while Defacto would be paying $3 300.

The bills include service charges for refuse removal, water and sewer.

The council’s Director for Housing and Community Services, Mr Edmore Nhekairo, reported that outstanding arrears accrued by the trust backdated to February 5, 2011 when it signed a Memorandum of Understanding with council amounted to $2,9 million, while those of Defacto Group’s stood at $237 600.

He also notified the meeting that the council’s legal division was finalising an addendum to the 2011 MoU to regularise Defacto’s occupation of the land.

Meanwhile, Mr Nhekairo told the meeting that the informal sector had contributed $1 532 473 to the city’s coffers last year and that revenue collected from the sector had declined by 23,39 percent.

“The decline was attributed to challenges that include economic hardships resulting in traders failing to pay market fees to council, political interference in allocation of market stalls to vendors and revenue collection as well as inadequate funding for the sector,” he said.

He said revenue from the sector came from markets, home industries and overnight guarded car parks.