Chronicle Editor
Yoliswa Dube-Moyo, Mat South Bureau Chief
Home-seekers in Gwanda are growing impatient as the local authority has failed to allocate them residential stands spanning back seven years amid concern that the province is experiencing an acute shortage of accommodation.
The dire situation is not only affecting civil servants but the entire community who have bought stands dating as far back as 2014 but are yet to be allocated the stands.
Some have since received service fee clearance letters but no progress has been made in the allocation of the stands.
Mr Anthony Mawere, one of the home-seekers who bought a stand at Dolfortein said the local authority had taken too long to allocate beneficiaries their stands.
“We bought these stands in December 2014 and paid council in full before being handed over to the developer. We started paying development fees which we all paid in full and were given confirmation letters.
The developer also received letters from council engineers to confirm that they had developed the stands to the required standard but the problem started when we went to council for approval of our plans.
That’s when we were told that the land doesn’t belong to them and there was still paper work to be done. Now we are almost retiring with nothing,” said Mr Mawere.
Gwanda Mayor Clr Njabulo Siziba said the local authority recently did a land audit which is expected to guide the allocation process.
“What we agreed on was that since we have a huge backlog dating back many years, let’s first clear the backlog and allocate people their stands.
We’re yet to get the results of the land audit, probably beginning of 2022 as most offices have closed for the holidays,” said Clr Siziba.
He said Gwanda town had runout of land and the local authority was awaiting for the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works to avail more land.
“We’ve submitted our lay out plans to the parent ministry so that Government can avail more land,” said Clr Siziba.
Government is targeting to construct 220 000 housing units under the National Development Strategy 1 and 20 000 of them will be in Matabeleland South province.
National Housing and Social Amenities Deputy Minister Yeukai Simbanegavi said the nation had a housing backlog of more than 1,3 million houses.
She said there was a need for partnerships in order to clear the backlog.
Deputy Minister Simbanegavi said Shelter Afrique had availed $60 million to the country towards construction of houses.
She said the money was divided among various financial institutions that include BancABC which received $11 million which will go towards construction of houses in Matabeleland South province.
“Under the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1) (2021-2025) housing delivery priority area we are looking at delivering 220 000 housing units and Matabeleland South province has a provincial target of 20 000 units. In the 2021 budget, treasury allocated $1 billion towards several housing projects,” she said.
Deputy Minister Simbanegavi said Government was committed to providing decent accommodation to all its citizens hence it was working on clearing the housing backlog.
She said Cabinet approved the Zimbabwe Human Settlements Policy last year and before that the Ministry had been operating without a clear policy.
Deputy Minister Simbanegavi said the new policy restricts sale of stands or construction of permanent structures before full services are in place.
The policy also bans construction of houses in wetlands.
“Provision of off-site infrastructure is now a responsibility of central Government while provision of on-site infrastructure is now responsibility of local authorities. We will not allow unauthorised and irregular building of houses in areas which are not designated such as wetlands,” she said.
“As for areas that are designated the new policy will not allow the construction of houses before services are put in place such as sewer and water reticulation and assurance of sources of energy such as electricity or green energy.
We also want to ensure that there will be roads, schools, hospitals, parking spaces, pre-schools, police stations, churches and other social amenities that have to be available in a human settlement.” – @Yolisswa
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