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Auxilia Katongomara Chronicle Reporter
MDC-T run councils are breeding land barons that have been fleecing desperate home seekers of their money, Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Minister Saviour Kasukuwere has told parliament.

Speaking during question time last Wednesday, Kasukuwere said MDC-T councillors were causing commotion in urban centres by illegally distributing land.

“The problem we have is with the councillors because they’re not really working according to how they should work. The land barons who are distributing pieces of land are the councillors, they’re creating these barons,” said Cde Kasukuwere.

“We’ve noted that most of these culprits are councillors from the MDC-T. As a government, we’ve planned to have a proper housing delivery programme accompanied by a transparent land and stands allocation programme.”

Kasukuwere said the land barons were cheating thousands of desperate land seekers of their hard earned cash by illegally selling them land.

“Unfortunately, councils have promoted these illegal land barons by allocating land in inappropriate places.

“I’ll bring up this issue next week when I raise the discussion in Parliament. There’s a lot of corruption in the councils, especially in MDC-T run local authorities. I would like to hold talks with the people who were talking about this,” he said.

Kasukuwere likened the behaviour of the city fathers to that of fathers who abuse their own children.

“We’ve a lot of corruption in our cities. As a government, we’d like people in urban areas to live a happy life, but it’s unfortunately impossible because of corrupt officials like the elders of the city councils. I may liken these corrupt councillors to fathers who abuse or rape their babies,” he said.

Responding to a question by Joseph Mapiki on how the government aims to assist low income earners to get affordable housing in the cities, Kasukuwere revealed that his ministry was working with the Development Cooperation and other developers in servicing land for affordable housing for low income earners.

“We’re also working on a process of giving access to low income earners and the poor so that they can afford decent housing,” he said.

Cde Kasukuwere has since his appointment as Minister of Local Government declared war on land barons.

Last Wednesday, 27 families were left homeless in Harare’s Budiriro and Glen Norah suburbs after their houses were demolished as they were built on state land which was meant for other projects.