Hwange Colliery to dispose housing units

Property Reporter
COAL miner Hwange Colliery Company Limited intends to dispose of more than half of its houses in the mining town, managing director Mr Thomas Makore has said.

The company owns about 5 000 housing units and is planning to sell 2 700 houses because its staff level has dropped to 2 300.

“We now have about 2 300 workers so we no longer need all the houses and the plan is to sell excess units,” said Mr Makore.

However, this is subject to shareholders’ approval. Government and investment vehicles owned by businessman Mr Nicholas van Hoogstraten are the biggest shareholders in Hwange.

Hwange is one of the oldest towns in Zimbabwe having originated from settler mining at the beginning of the last century. Its growth has generally been driven by coal mining activities by Hwange Colliery Company and power generation by Zesa Holdings.

As a result of population growth, the town expanded to become a major district centre performing regional functions that are administrative and commercial in nature.

For years, Hwange Colliery has been operating like a local authority offering services such as water and sewer reticulation, health facilities, housing, waste collection of most of the compounds as well as well as sports and recreational facilities, services divorced from its core business.

However, the prevailing operational challenges facing the company has seen it failing to sustain the provision of the services.

Due to the overlapping administration and land ownership by Hwange Colliery, the local authority only provides services to two suburbs namely Mpumalanga and Baobab.

The Government is already creating a framework that will compel all coal miners around Hwange to participate in development of the town.

This relates to infrastructural development and provision of housing, education and health facilities.

For more than a century, Hwange enjoyed the monopoly of coal mining, but there are now four companies mining in Hwange area, the biggest being Makomo Resources, which has since overtaken Hwange Colliery as the country largest coal miner.