adminIn an interview yesterday, Gweru City Council deputy mayor, Clr Taurai Demo, said some residents in the city went to the extent of hiring tractors to till pieces of land in prohibited open spaces, including those earmarked for urban expansion.
He said the local authority had for long been lenient and would now act on the practice.
“We have noticed that urban farming had gone too far. Some residents are even hiring tractors to till areas which would have been surveyed for future development and we cannot tolerate this anymore,” he said.
Clr Demo said the council had not acted for some years to stop urban farming, a development which he said resulted in residents flouting city by-laws.
“When the country’s economy was not performing well in 2008, the majority of urban dwellers resorted to urban farming to make ends meet. As a local authority, we resolved that we should let people cultivate these small pieces of land to earn a living. The residents are, however, now riding on this lenience and at times uprooting pegs which were placed in surveyed areas,” he said.
Clr Demo said Gweru City Council could be forced to come up with a maize-slashing programme similar to that carried out by Harare and Bulawayo city councils as a way of controlling urban farming.
“With the prevailing situation, we will be forced to go around slashing all crops grown in prohibited areas as is the case in other cities,” he said.
There has been widespread urban farming in all the country’s cities and towns in recent years.
Last year, residents in Makokoba suburb in Bulawayo clashed with city council authorities after council employees slashed their maize crop, which was at tasselling stage.
Disgruntled residents then vented their anger on their local Member of the House of Assembly, Ms Thokozani Khupe, who is also the Deputy Prime Minister, for failing to plead with the MDC-T run council to spare their crops.
Online Reporter