$80k set aside for housing

RUNDE Rural District Council has set aside $80 000 for next year’s housing developments in Mabasa and Msipani areas, as the local authority seeks to increase revenue sources.

While the municipality has several other housing projects, finance director Mr Tarirayi Sibanda said they were only sure about the projects at Mabasa and Msipani.

He said council was facing challenges of approval of their layout plans and Environmental Impact Assessment plans by the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing and the Environmental Management Agency respectively.

“Generally, we have other housing projects that we may do, but in this 2018 budget we could not include others because we have challenges when it comes to approval of layout plans,” said Mr Sibanda.

“We only put up the Mabasa and Msipani housing developments which we know are clear as the layouts have been done. Layout plans and EIA plans take time, hence you cannot move with the speed you want.”

Mr Sibanda said they had gone for four years waiting for the plans to be approved, leading to delays on the housing developments projects.

“There are other housing developments which we did not put in that budget because of such delays, but we hope that these will be sorted soon,” he said.

Mr Sibanda said council hoped that calls for the Ease of Doing Business could also be reciprocated in the Government ministries and departments so that they benefited from the initiative.

“For example, in Kosvoro, we have regularised settlements, but the developments are taking longer, so we have to work on areas whose plans are available,” he said.

Runde RDC chief executive Mr Gorden Moyo said while they relied on mineral companies for revenue, they had decided to expand their sources of income.

“On land developments, we are saying we also want to contribute to the national housing delivery, so as Runde, we also want to play our part in that regard,” he said.

“But these housing developments are also for raising revenue for council, so we want to survive on that too, we want to maximise on that.”

Mr Moyo said mineral resources were a finite resource and would be exhausted.

“We must create our own sources of revenue because once we have stands and people have built houses there, definitely they will be paying for those services — the water, refuse collection,” he said.