The Sunday News
Prosper Ndlovu in Victoria Falls
The Government has ordered all local authorities to immediately transfer into home ownership, houses they built for rental occupation as it moves to purge the ballooning housing backlog presently hovering around 1,5 million countrywide.Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Minister Dr Ignatius Chombo told Parliamentarians during the pre-budget seminar for the 2015 national budget in Victoria Falls yesterday that the Government was disturbed by the ever increasing accommodation shortages, which are being manifested in illegal occupation of land in towns and sprouting of squatter camps.
“We’re compelling all local authorities in Zimbabwe especially the major cities who’ve had houses on their books for the last 20-30-40-60 years in them being rented out to families, that we want those houses sold to the sitting tenants and title deeds given to that person,” said Dr Chombo.
The issue has been a bone of contention in Bulawayo’s council owned houses in Iminyela, Mabutweni and Millennium in Emganwini suburbs, where residents have sought home ownership without success.
In line with the Revised National Housing Policy (2012) the minister said the Government was also working on resuscitating the rural housing programme aimed at raising the standard of houses from traditional units to modern structures.
“As such the Government has approved a programme to construct 313 000 housing units or stands in the next 40 months. This programme will be funded by various banks and financial institutions.
“The banks will be given authority to issue title deeds on our behalf so that they are able to recoup their money,” said Dr Chombo.
The new housing scheme reserves certain percentages to specific groups of people with war veterans, civil servants, security ministries, women and the youth entitled to a 10 percent quota of the stands or houses. The remaining 50 percent is open for the generality of Zimbabweans.
Members of Parliament are also entitled to benefiting from the scheme.
“With this arrangement in place it’s unnecessary and unacceptable to see unplanned settlements as we see in parts of Seke and Chitungwiza and parts of Harare,” Dr Chombo said.
“Those are illegal, those are going to cause us a lot of health problems. They’ll be centres where thieves, trouble makers and nonsense givers who will hide away from authority. Those continue to be illegal.”
The minister said his deputy Biggie Matiza has been tasked to ensure that illegal structures were regularised and that those not regularisable were removed.
“We’re not going back on that because we’ll make our cities unplanned and ungovernable,” he added.
During the meeting it emerged that infrastructure development was behind by 15 years across the country’s local authorities due to limited funding and lack of access to lines of credit.
War veterans leader and Buhera South MP Joseph Chinotimba demanded that war veterans be given stands and houses for free, saying the former freedom fighters did not have enough income to afford housing.
Other legislators urged involvement of people living with disabilities, SMEs and the private sector while calling increased budget towards retaining skilled technicians to ministries.
Dr Chombo said his ministry was working with local authorities to come up with modern designs for flats in urban centres that will enhance attraction of the cities and enhance the image of the country.
The minister said the results based management (RBM) system, would remain in force as an effective accountability tool for senior managers for local authorities and warned non-performing chief executive officers and town clerk’s contracts would not be renewed.
