adminThe Government has, in this regard, initiated a number of housing programmes since independence meant to benefit workers in both the public and private sectors. These initiatives were complemented by local authorities, building societies and in some cases individual companies also built houses for employees. There were also housing schemes initiated by home-seekers themselves who pooled resources together to form housing co-operatives.
Most of the housing schemes unfortunately ground to a halt due to economic challenges the country experienced during the past few years. The hyper-inflationary environment forced building societies to suspend mortgage loans, councils were also forced to shelve housing projects and housing co-operatives were equally affected so were companies that were building houses for employees.
The announcement by the Government that it has allocated $12 million to fund the construction of low cost houses for civil servants under the Civil Service Housing Loan Facility should bring a sigh of relief to many civil servants who had given up any hopes of ever owning a house. After building societies suspended mortgage finance, most Zimbabwean workers lost hope of ever owning a house given their low salaries compared to the costs of constructing a house.
Many in fact could not even afford to buy even residential stands. According to National Housing and Social Amenities Minister Giles Mutsekwa, beneficiaries of the recently availed $12 million loan facility were those civil servants who already have housing stands and want money to build houses. He said the beneficiaries would apply for loans at the financial institutions handling the facility. Minister Mutsekwa said parallel to the Government programme, was the initiative to facilitate building societies so that they can resuscitate the facility to provide mortgage loans to home-seekers.
He also said negotiations with financial institutions for lines of credit towards low cost housing units were at an advanced stage. Government set aside $9 million in its 2012 budget meant to recapitalise the public and private housing institutions. This is a commendable move that will enable housing co-operatives and other such institutions to complete outstanding housing projects throughout the country.
The decision by Government to engage institutions such as the National Social Security Authority so that it could fund housing projects will expand the scope of housing provision in the country and enable more people to benefit. Institutions such as NSSA handle public funds and it is only logical that this money is ploughed back to benefit the very same people who were or are still making monthly contributions to NSSA. The decision by Government to provide security to its employees in the form of housing and car loans will not only boost morale but will also spur the workers to even work harder.
It is through such schemes that Government will be able to retain the much needed skilled manpower. The challenge to Government is to ensure the different schemes meant to improve the conditions of service of its employees are spread as much as possible to cover all workers including those in rural areas. It will, however, not be feasible for Government to cover all civil servants at one go but what is needed is a system that will ensure fair distribution of the limited resources.
The civil servants that have already benefited from previous housing schemes should give way to those that have not benefited and those that benefited from say the car loan scheme should be at the bottom of the list of the latest housing scheme. This is only possible if Government comes up with an accurate record system that is not open to manipulation by unscrupulous and greedy individuals that might want to benefit more than others.
We want to commend Government for realising that there are many ways of improving conditions of service for its workers other than salary reviews and what is important is to quickly roll out these programmes so that civil servants start benefiting.
Online Reporter