Chronicle EditorRopafadzo Ndangariro Herald Reporter
Harare City Council has urged its residents to desist from joining housing co-operatives as it is no longer allocating land to them. Speaking during a conference on land issues held in Harare on Tuesday, council spokesperson Mr Michael Chideme said home seekers should go and register as individuals at council to avoid problems.
“It is advisable that you don’t join housing corporatives now because if you join them all the money you pay to the co-oporatives will not be presented to the council and the council will not allocate you any land,” he said.
“So council is saying you are the one looking for land, so come as an individual, a lot of people are coming to our offices everyday with different grievances.” Mr Chideme added that even if it is an individual selling land, one must verify first to see if it is illegal or not.
“We as the council are not the complainant because the one who lost his money is an individual, so please pass the message, don’t buy land from individuals without verifications from their offices,” he said.
“Please don’t give money to co-operatives, we as the city council cannot do anything to these people, we cannot destroy these co-operatives because we don’t register them.” He added that if people do not heed council’s advice and build on illegal land allocated to them by these co-operatives, they will be left with no other choice than to pull down the structures.
“Everybody needs order, if a group of people invade the land, we can’t force them to leave. Its inhuman, we give them a notice, we consider their rights, go through the court after all these procedures we then pull down the structures,” said Mr Chideme.
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