adminAbel Zhakata Senior Reporter
CLOSE to 7 000 Gimboki South Housing Scheme beneficiaries who paid millions of dollars to the Mutare Housing Consortium towards the servicing of residential stands are in a quandary after the High Court ordered the eviction of the consortium from the site and reinstated Dreamoss as the legal developer of the scheme.
Dreamoss, which was hired by the consortium to service the stands, was elbowed out of the project last year in unclear circumstances after the consortium raised several contractual mishaps.
This resulted in beneficiaries, who used to pay monthly instalments to Dreamoss towards the servicing of the stands, making payments with the consortium.
Dreamoss, which has since been placed under judicial management, sought relief with the High Court on the basis that it had a binding contract with the consortium to service the stands.
On December 10 2014, Justice Chigumba granted a provisional order which instructed the Mutare Housing Consortium to restore possession of the project to Dreamoss.
The court ordered the consortium to move off the site upon receiving the order.
“The respondent (Mutare Housing Consortium) and all those claiming through it are hereby ordered to remove all their construction equipment and personnel from Gimboki South, Dangamvura, Mutare upon service of this order. Should the respondent and all those claiming through it fail to remove all the construction equipment and personnel . . . the Sheriff of Zimbabwe is ordered to evict the respondent and all those claiming through it… the respondent is hereby ordered to restore possession or occupation of Gimboki South to the applicant (Dreamoss) upon service of this order,” reads the order.
Dreamoss judicial manager, Dr Elison Munyaka, said the Mutare Housing Consortium will be served with the court order this week and pave way for the developer to complete its work.
“We are going to serve the consortium with the order today. What the consortium is doing is against the contents of the agreement we entered. They are not supposed to receive money from beneficiaries because Dreamoss entered into personal agreements with the beneficiaries of the stands with respect to servicing the stands.
“Once we get on site we will finish the work that we started and ensure that all the three phases are serviced. At present we are being blocked from carrying out our work by the consortium,” he said.
An executive member of the consortium, Mrs Tsuro said they were not going anywhere as Dreamoss was to blame for breaching the contract.
She said their lawyers were preparing heads of arguments to challenge the court order.
“Beneficiaries no longer want to hear anything concerning Dreamoss because they have had enough,” she said.
The project which started in July 2007 has been stalled by rampant corruption and abuse of beneficiaries’ funds.
There are serious cases of double allocation of stands that have since resulted in nasty clashes among some of the beneficiaries who are illegally occupying the un-serviced stands.
Mutare City Council has tried to arbitrate and iron out the differences among members of the consortium but the process has yielded nothing especially when it comes to auditing the books and see how money is being used.
Beneficiaries are at the receiving end for they are at one time ordered to pay money into this account and later told to change goal posts and deposit money into another account.
The resulting situation has brewed confusion among beneficiaries who are no longer having a true record of how much they have forked out to have their stands serviced for close to 10 years now.
Online Reporter