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Some officials at Chinhoyi Municipality are being accused of duping former Golden Kopje employees of 16 houses. There are also allegations that the officials could have tampered with title deeds for two other houses.
Sources alleged that when the mine stopped operations in 2007, council irregularly offered the houses to people who did not originally occupy them.
Golden Kopje started offering the houses to its employees in 1996, before it downsized its workforce the following year.
Documents seen by The Herald show that Government, which conducted investigations into the matter, questioned the authenticity of some of the title deeds that were used to evict ex-Golden Kopje workers.
“The people claiming to have bought the stands are non-former Golden Kopje employees,” said the Government in the report.
“The title deeds, which the people are using to evict these former mine employees, do not recognise the structure the mine built and clearly state that it is a vacant piece of land.
“The deeds themselves require verification from the Deeds Registrar since they appear dubious.”
There are also allegations that the houses were corruptly allocated.
Chinhoyi Municipality spokesperson Mr Tichaona Mlauzi said the local authority did not have any hand in the allocation of the 16 houses as it was an internal matter at Golden Kopje.
“After the closure of the mine, we gave them offer letters as council for the purchase of all the houses,” he said.
“However, among themselves they set up an internal committee to share the properties and council was never at any given time involved in the allocation of those houses to any individual.”
Golden Kopje and the Chinhoyi Municipality reportedly entered into a Public-Private Partnership more than a decade ago, in which council gave the firm 150 stands free of charge for the construction of mine houses.
As part of the arrangement, council was supposed to take full ownership of the houses in the event that Golden Kopje closed.
Online Reporter