Govt exposes illegal land allocations
GOVERNMENT has unearthed illegal land allocations for residential purposes by Chitungwiza Municipality in areas meant for other purposes including ZESA and trunk sewer line servitudes.
According to a report compiled by the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, Physical Planning Department, Chitungwiza Municipality parcelled out land and leased land on prohibited areas, but misrepresented to the ministry in their audit reports for 2013 and 2015 respectively.
The team’s aim was to come up with a feasible technical assessment report on areas, which can be regularised.
In Unit K council illegally created church stands under an existing 33KV power line without following provisions of the Regional, Town and Country Planning (RTCP) and issued lease agreements,” read the report.
“There are four church stands on the site plan, which is a wetland but the 2013 audit report mentioned only three church stands and two of them are still existing while the other two were invaded. In Zengeza, council created an additional eight stands illegally on top of existing 139 residential stands created by one Mr Mhurushomana and issued lease agreements.
“Council repossessed the stand and at the same time submitted the layout plan to the Ministry for appraisal for the proposed subdivision of the same property not clearly indicating that there are stands to be regularised with council lease agreements.
“According to the Environmental Management Agency this is a wetland and there are no existing water and sewer pipes within the property.”
The report also showed that council illegally created a school at a place called Pagomba without an approved layout plan contrary to what the 2013 audit report alluded to.
“Minimum size of a primary school is supposed to be 3,5 hectares but we noticed from their submitted illegal layout plan that the college has 5 160 sqm, which is about half a hectare.”
“Council had lately assessed the stands and the beneficiaries are paying penalties for occupying land without council’s approval and the area is extremely wet.
“In Unit L Extension, an area reserved for a primary school and a commercial node consisting of a filling station, bus stop, shops stand and a recreational facility was allocated to Mr Fredrick Mabamba.
“The layout was never approved contrary to the previous reports and council prepared layout but council proceeded to allocate and issue lease agreement without approval. Instead council allocated the land to Mr Frederick Mabamba for development of a school but the school and commercial node were converted to approximately 2004 residential stands and they issued lease agreements,” read the report.
“Council seems to have sanitised the area as they corrected duplicated numbers created on these sites from the random sampling done by the assessing team. The allocations occurred around 2009 to 2010 periods.”