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Vic Falls residents

The dispute between Victoria Falls Municipality and home seekers demands that the two parties engage to find a solution. More than 400 home seekers who belong to 17 housing co-operatives on Monday invaded a piece of land they say was allocated to them a decade ago.

The home seekers say they were allocated the piece of land near Mfelandawonye suburb in 2008 and have since contributed about $600 000 towards servicing the land and connecting water supplies. Council has since entered into partnership with CBZ to service the same piece of land at a cost of about $12 million. The home seekers are saying council should reverse its deal with the bank and they are prepared to refund the bank the money it has used so far to service the land.

According to the co-chairman of the consortium of the co-operatives involved, Mr Demas Chimunda, council management last Friday admitted at a meeting that they made a mistake by selling the land to the bank. A meeting was therefore proposed between the home seekers, the bank and council while at the same time council identifies alternative land to give to the bank.

The home seekers said council which gave them offer letters with stand numbers to confirm that land had been allocated to them, never consulted them when it decided to sell the same land to the bank. They said they only discovered that the land had been sold to the bank when they met council management on May 30 this year. Mr Chimunda said 80 percent of the beneficiaries had already bought building materials and were just awaiting approval to start building.

The Town Clerk Mr Ronnie Dube appealed to the affected residents to be patient while council engages the bank for a win-win solution saying invading land is illegal. He said possessing offer letters and stand numbers does not give beneficiaries the legal right over the piece of land. What is clear from what

Mr Dube is saying is that he does not deny that council gave the home seekers offer letters and stand numbers.

Council is therefore guilty of double allocation of land and a solution has to be found. It is against this background that we implore the home seekers and council to engage in order to find a solution.  Mr Dube warned that they might leave the home seekers to deal directly with the bank which in our view is not the way to go.

Council has admitted that it made a mistake when it sold the piece of land to the bank when it had already allocated the same land to home seekers. It is therefore incumbent upon council to correct its mistake by either finding alternative land to allocate the bank or refund the bank the money it has used so far.

The other alternative will be for the bank to give priority to the affected home seekers when it allocates stands but this option’s challenge is that some of them might not qualify for the bank’s scheme. What is, however, not in dispute is that council made a boob and as such should find a solution that does not prejudice either the home seekers or the bank.

We want to once again urge  council to continue engaging both parties in order to come up with the best solution. Confrontation is not the best way to resolve the dispute hence the need for home-seekers to be patient while their leaders engage council.