Chitown residents take Council to court over sale ...

Chitown residents take Council to court over sale of mayoral mansion stand

ChiTown acting mayor tells entrepreneurs to regularise businesses -Newsday Zimbabwe — Acting Mayor Kiven Mutimbanyoka

Gilbert Munetsi

Chitungwiza Municipality is under fire from residents amid revelations some members of the local authority sold land that was earmarked for the construction of a mayoral mansion.

The local authority has since been given a 48-hour ultimatum to fulfil conditions that include making public the process that led to the sale.

An association that represents residents, Chitungwiza Progressive Residents Association, on Monday, April 17, served Acting Town Clerk Evangelista Machona with papers under the counsel of legal practitioners Sande Legal Practice.

The residents, who are being represented by Messrs Lloyd Mashayamombe and Gift Kurupati, argue that at an unknown date, Chitungwiza Municipality parcelled out the piece of land that had specifically been reserved for the construction of the mayoral mansion.

While its size and value could not be ascertained at the time of going to print, the piece of land is located near Zuva Service Station, a stone’s throw from Makoni Shopping Centre. It is believed to have been sold for US$75 000.

It is alleged that with a view to sanitise the sale, the office of the Acting TC on April 15 convened a full council meeting in Kadoma to sell the gospel of change of use of property into commercial without following proper procedure as envisaged by the law.

“We assert that the above state of affairs is marred by irregularities which must be addressed by you as soon as possible. It is more than worrying that council has decided to conduct its business in a secretive and scandalous manner to the extent that efforts to engage it have been defeated through the use of falsified and fake promises.

“We note with concern that your actions are a breach to our client’s constitutional rights to access to information and administrative justice. To that end, we are instructed to demand, as we hereby do, that within the next 48 hours, you issue a public statement regarding the status of the property reserved for the mayoral mansion,” the lawyers wrote.

The other condition given by the residents is that council reserves the purported change of use of the property, failure of which they will explore available legal remedies.

“The resultant costs of such courses of action shall be recovered from you,” they said through their lawyers.

Sources who confided to this publication named three councillors as being behind the deal, revealing the stand was sold to one businessman who holds the local dealership for an international lubricants company.

The council yesterday convened a press conference with an aim to “set the record straight”, but residents would have none of it, demanding that those implicated in the illegal sale ought to be brought to book.

Acting Mayor Kiven Mutimbanyoka told the media the stand was sold by land barons, adding that as a planning authority, Chitungwiza Municipality has a right to plan and sell the stand.

Thereafter a service delivery WhatsApp group was awash with messages from residents who reiterated any sale should be done in accordance with the provisions of Section 90 of Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Act and as enshrined in the constitution, Administration of Justice Act and the Public Entities Act.

The legal statutes demand that a committee has to sit, recommend and certify a disposal such as the piece of land under dispute, after which the accounting officer (in this case the TC) advertises to notify the public and seeks the relevant auctioneer in accordance with the law.