By Zivanai Dhewa

The MDC Alliance led Chitungwiza Municipality has once again duped its voters by getting a demolition order to destroy their homes built on land allocated by the same Municipality.

Chitungwiza Municipality sent a Notice to the home owners whose houses and structures have been built and set up on wet-lands, railway servitude, under high voltage ZESA power lines, on road servitudes and invaded cemetery areas.

The notice read, “Notice is hereby given that it has come to the attention of Council that the following areas have been or have since been occupied and illegal structures are in the process of being put up or have already been put up without council approval.

“Therefore, take note that in terms of Section 35 of the Regional, Town and Country Planning Act (Chapter 29:12) 1996 you are ordered to, depart from the land; remove all your property from the land; demolish any structures erected and remove all the rubble from the land and restore the land to its original state.”

The Harare Post managed to get an interview with one of the residents, Mr Ernest Musabaiwa, who expressed dismay at the way Chitungwiza Municipality is treating them.

“This is preposterous, we did not allocate these stands to ourselves; we paid for them using our hard earned money.  I paid well over US$4000 for this piece of land, confident that it was council allocated land, I proceeded to build my family house.  Now they want to demolish my house.

“Is this a game the MDC A led councils play with people’s lives and hard earned money,” Musabaiwa snapped.

However, in an effort to rid Council of any blame concerning the illegal parcelling of land, the Acting Town Clerk Mrs E Machona, said, “It has been a tendency of occupiers to ignore Council orders and instead listen to land barons that would have illegally parcelled out the land.

The residents claimed that they bought their land from Chitungwiza Municipality using hard currency and now they turn their backs and claim ignorance.

Meanwhile, Chitungwiza Municipality has been embroiled in corrupt land dealings while service delivery has suffered as there is none to talk about in Chitungwiza. Sewer is seen flowing everywhere with no clean water to talk about.

“Next time, we put an X on the ballot it will be according to service delivery not this nightmare that we have lived since the year 2000.  We will only vote for deliverables not empty promises,” said Musabaiwa