Former Deputy Mayor stand withdrawal made official

Vusumuzi Dube, Online News Editor
BULAWAYO City Council has officially withdrawn an offer for a stand it had allocated to former Deputy Mayor, Mr Tinashe Kambarami after it turned out that the stand had already been allocated to a different company.

In June, it was reported that councillors had approved an industrial stand purchase by Grade One Private Limited, a company which investigations revealed is co-owned by Mr Kambarami and his wife, Rosemary.

It, however, later emerged that the stand was located within a wetland area, with councillors pushing for Mr Kambarami to lose it. According to the latest council report, it has since emerged that the local authority has resolved to withdraw the offer to the former Deputy Mayor after it turned out that while council officials had claimed that the original owner of the stand had surrendered it back to the local authority, that never happened.

“The Town Clerk (Mr Christopher Dube) had reported on 23 October 2020, that Stand 19792 BT had been surrendered by the previous owner and was therefore available for re-allocation, council, on 4 November, 2020 had then resolved to allocate Stand 19792 B.T. to Grade One Private Limited.

“Meanwhile, before the offer was made to Grade One (Pvt) Ltd, it was realised that Stand19792 BT, was actually not surrendered. In view of the foregoing, the Director of Housing and Community Services (Mr Dictor Khumalo) had prepared a report to the Finance and Development Committee seeking to correct the error,” reads the council report.

It is reported that after the initial report on the stand being possibly under double allocation, the Town Clerk had later submitted a report claiming that the original owner had surrendered the stand which again turned out not to be the case.

“The city valuer and estates officer explained that the department was proposing to rescind the two council resolutions which had resolved to allocate Stand 19792 to Grade One (Pvt) Ltd. The Town Clerk had reported in October 2020 that the stand had been surrendered back to council and was available for relocation.

“Thereafter it was realised that the stand had never been surrendered and there was now a double allocation. A report was submitted to the Finance and Development to correct the error. The Town Clerk again submitted another report in May 2021 confirming that there had been no double allocation and the stand was still available hence the second council resolution.

It was discovered that the stand was not available for reallocation because the owner of the stand was on the ground,” reads the report.