The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Municipal Reporter
THE Bulawayo City Council has given the green light for shop owners who had their shops damaged during the three-day violent stayaway, to operate from churches, community halls and residential houses as they work towards repairing their facilities.
Marauding youths and activists from the opposition parties especially MDC-Alliance last month went on a rampage, looting shops, destroying infrastructure and attacking police and ordinary citizens during a three-day stayaway organised by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.
The violent skirmishes under the guise of “Zimbabwe National Total Shutdown” saw a number of buildings in the city’s western areas being extensively damaged by looters, in some cases the hoodlums went on to burn the shops.
According to the latest council report, the local authority working with the Bulawayo Provincial Affairs Minister, Cde Judith Ncube noted that there was now a serious crisis of no supermarkets in the western areas resulting in people having to travel to the city centre to buy groceries hence the need to come up with temporary facilities for supermarket owners to operate from.
“The recent disturbances that rocked the country have resulted in a shopping centre crisis within the western areas of the city of Bulawayo as a greater proportion of the shops were vandalised by protesters. The situation is now a humanitarian crisis since people have no shopping facilities and are not able to buy low order goods.
“Most people might not afford to travel to the city centre for daily necessities. As a result of this a stakeholder meeting was held at the Resident Minister’s office to look at various options to help the shop operators who had valid trading licences and their properties have been vandalised by providing them with temporary trading accommodation and in the process helping the residents by providing temporary shops to buy their daily necessities,” reads part of the council report.
The temporary facilities will be in place for up to 12 months as shop owners repair their premises and will be allowable only for those traders whose properties were vandalised and have valid trading licences. Shop owners will also be offered the temporary council accommodation on free rental as they will still be required to pay rates for the damaged properties.
“Council halls are available around the city and the department of housing and community services would facilitate the allocation of space to the traders, church organisations were also part of the stakeholders meeting and would facilitate allocation of space to the traders.
“In instances where the shop owner has a house close by or is able to rent a house in the vicinity they can set up caravans adjacent to their shops for the period duration of repairs. Those traders who had their premises damaged but are utilising portions of the premises while doing renovations, council minimum health requirements will be relaxed for a period of six months while renovations are taking place,” reads the council report.
According to the report shopping centres in the city that were extensively damaged during the demonstrations and would require more time to repair include New Magwegwe Commercial Centre (Mabhodoko), Tshabalala Extension (Chicken Corner), Entumbane District Commercial Centre and Lobengula West Commercial Centre (Mountain View).
Those that had minor damages include Nketa 9 commercial centre, Emganwini 1 and 2 commercial centre and Cowdray Park phase 1 commercial centre (TM) and Cowdray Park 2 commercial centre (Terminus).
On Friday Government announced that it has availed $19,5 million from a special fund set up to assist businesses that were looted and destroyed during last month’s violent protests.
