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Patrick Chitumba, Midlands Bureau Chief
GOVERNMENT’S expansive housing development programme is gaining momentum across the country with various accommodation projects at different levels of implementation.

Last year, President Mnangagwa launched the Zimbabwe National Human Settlements Policy, a medium-term programme envisaged to drive national housing development.

Housing delivery is one of the 14 national priorities under the National Development Strategy (NDS1), and the key result for the housing thematic area is the delivery of affordable and quality settlements in urban and rural areas.

To reduce the national backlog, the Government, private sector and individuals are working together to roll out construction projects, which also entails provision of onsite developments such as roads, water and sewer reticulation services at existing projects.

This is aimed at reducing the national backlog, which stands at 1,5 million.

The Minister of National Housing and Social Amenities, Daniel Garwe, who was in Gweru on Sunday touring the Senga Messengers Camp block of flats, said more progress was being recorded despite the economic challenges.

The Senga project has four blocks of flats under construction by a private contractor, Pevimag Construction Company. Four more blocks will be constructed by the Department of Public Works and will accommodate 64 families.

In Lupane the Government is providing requisite infrastructure for Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle beneficiaries and the contractor has since moved to site to commence operations for the construction of residential flats at the Government Offices’ site, said the minister.

Government is also providing roads, water and sewer reticulation services for Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle beneficiaries in Empumalanga in Hwange.

In Bulawayo, Government is working with private land developers such as Hopelyn Estate that has completed roads, water and sewer reticulation programme with stand owners moving in to construct their houses.

The construction of Senga flats in Gweru started in February and to date, the contractor has made notable progress, said Minister Garwe.

“We have been to Hwange, Lupane and Bulawayo looking at the different housing programmes that are taking place.

Now we are here in Gweru,” he said. “We would have expected more on this site but under the difficult circumstances in which our economy is exposed to, our contractors are doing well.

“We have Pevimag Construction Company who have just imported some building materials from South Africa showing commitment under the difficult circumstances.

They are now doing decking from the first floor.”

Minister Garwe expressed concern over delays in the public works segment but acknowledged challenges faced delays in payment to contractors and procurement bottlenecks, which he pledged to resolve.

“We take full responsibility, we are going to sit down this week and clear all hurdles derailing progress,” said Minister Garwe.

“In Hwange we are servicing stands in line with the new housing policy where we are saying no houses should be built before servicing the stands.

This programme stalled from 2014 because of financial constraints but we have sorted it out.”

The minister said he was impressed by the Bulawayo project where onsite infrastructure has been put in place and the first phase is complete and owners have started building their houses at Hopelyn Estate.

“As Government we are facilitating the smooth running of the project.

They have done very well.

All phases have got roads and sewer and people have started building houses,” he said.

Minister Garwe said the Government was seized with regularising Lupane housing development, which started in 2014 but was marred by parallel developments, which exposed lack of discipline on behalf of contractors.

“We are now regularising all the settlements which became informal settlements.

The same as in Hwange where we appointed a contractor who is doing roads and the other doing water and sewer reticulation,” he said.

“All that is work in progress and by the end of the year they must be fully regularised.

The houses were built a long time ago.

“Proper planning was done and so were layout plans approved and people started to construct houses before servicing the stands. So, we are now coming in retrospect to provide services.

The contractor is doing very well.

“We have programmes across the country from Harare to Beitbridge and they are going on well.”

The minister said all these projects were part of the housing pillar under the National Development Strategy (NDS1), which spans 2021 to 2025 and feeds into an upper middle-income economy vision by 2030.

Pevimag Construction managing director, Mr Peter Majengwa, said the four blocks of flats they were building were of standard quality.

“We managed to get to the first-floor deck level on all the four,” he said.

“We have project challenges due to late payments but Minister Garwe promised to look into it this week.

I hope they are able to resource the project so that we resume on a full-time scale like we were doing when the project started.”