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Leonard Ncube, Victoria Falls Reporter
VICTORIA Falls Municipality will refund about 800 home seekers who had paid for housing stands in the Buffer Zone since 2008.

The home seekers paid monthly contributions of $95 per month and have offer letters dating back to around 2008.

Concerns were raised when council sold the same piece of land to CBZ thereby prejudicing the home seekers.

Council and CBZ last year entered into a $12 million housing project partnership.  In terms of the partnership, the financial institution would fully service 1 174 low cost housing units for first-time home seekers in the Buffer Zone.

The project was set to ease the town’s housing backlog that stands at 15 000 but residents said the scheme favours the rich.

Each stand is pegged at $9 000.

Residents are now demanding that the local authority releases names of beneficiaries of both the Buffer Zone housing project and BC847 as they allege corruption by some councillors.

The financial institution is yet to release names of beneficiaries, while residents allege councillors are some of the beneficiaries when they were not eligible.

Town Clerk Mr Ronnie Dube told The Chronicle that around 800 home seekers will be refunded after the local authority and the bank agreed to refund those who had contributed towards the stands before the bank moved into the project. “The unfortunate part is that council provisionally allocated land and later sold it to the bank. The way forward then is that beneficiaries will be refunded by the bank at current rates,” said Mr Dube.

He said the council had identified an alternative piece of land which the local authority will fully service upon payment of the refund by the bank.

Mr Dube could not be drawn into revealing how much the bank will be paying as refund.

“This has been communicated to beneficiaries and council has identified an alternative piece of land. One significant thing is that council signed a contract with the bank and these people didn’t pay for the land but for other costs like environmental assessment hence the land remains council’s property,” he said.

Mr Dube urged residents to approach council with information about those who corruptly benefited.

@ncubeleon