NSSA to develop 1,000 houses in Bulawayo

Leonard Ncube Victoria Falls Reporter
THE National Social Security Authority (NSSA) is in talks with the Bulawayo City Council seeking land to develop up to 1,000 low cost houses in the city.

While the second largest city is battling ballooning accommodation shortages with the housing waiting list topping 100,000 — there are fears the local authority might miss the golden chance after it indicated recently that it had exhausted all the land for high density housing.

NSSA is rolling out a nationwide housing scheme as part of efforts to enhance provision of accommodation in line with the dictates of the social services cluster under the government’s blueprint, Zim-Asset.

NSSA chief executive officer James Matiza said the proposed project would be part of the establishment of a building society by August this year.

“We’ve to implement Zim-Asset specifications especially on housing provision, which should be met by 2018. As NSSA, we used to hold 40 percent of shares in FBC Building Society, which we were not using and that is why the government said we should come in and set up building society, which would provide low cost housing in line with Zim-Asset,” said Matiza.

“At the moment, we’re in Masvingo where we’re working on 680 low cost housing stands and after Masvingo we’re moving to Bulawayo where we’re looking at between 800 and 1,000 housing stands.

“We’ve been engaging the Bulawayo municipality and the local government because under Zim-Asset, we’re not supposed to buy land. The government promised to give us land and we’re in the process of engaging.”

Matiza said while NSSA bought a piece of land to develop stands in Masvingo, the situation was different for Bulawayo.

He said the government would avail land to them through the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing as provided for in the economic blueprint.

Matiza said after Bulawayo, NSSA would return to Harare for Glaudina housing project under Phase Two.

The pensions authority has already finished building houses in Glaudina under Phase One scheme.

Matiza said this on the sidelines of a social security institutions experts seminar under the auspices of International Social Security Association (ISSA) hosted by NSSA, which ended here on Friday.

He said the seminar was meant to give a platform for sharing ideas on how to improve collection of social security contributions.

ISSA is divided into sub-regions and last week’s seminar was at Sadc level.

Matiza said NSSA was sitting at 59 percent compliance rate by way of registered and paid up companies and 88 percent budget compliance.