Squatters swamp Bulawayo industrial area

SQUATTERS are fast emerging in Bulawayo's industrial area as hundreds of people who lost their jobs when their companies folded are now building shacks in the environs of their former employment.

These shack dwellers yesterday said they had resorted to this form of accommodation due to failure to pay rentals for decent accommodation let alone buy or build their own houses.

Shylet Sibanda, whose husband was a caretaker at Global Plumbing, which has since relocated to Mozambique, said they had moved to the site after her husband lost his job because they had nowhere else to stay.

"We have been staying here for years and have made this place our home. As you can see we have even cultivated a vegetable garden and my children attend a school nearby.

"Right now they are people here who carve tombstones and others that repair cars with which we share this compound. We have no plans of going anywhere else," she said.

The shack, which is made of scrap metal and is poorly ventilated houses Sibanda and her husband, their four children including a 6month-old baby and some members of their extended family.

Bulawayo deputy mayor Councillor Gift Banda said council was not aware of the situation but declined to comment further on the issue.

The abandoned site, which others have turned into a workshop for carving tombstones and repairing cars has no source of running water and poses as a health hazard for young children.

It is believed that many city councils across the country have long housing waiting lists with Bulawayo's coming close to 100,000. The heavily affected councils have over the past years been on an intense exercise to reduce the wait by engaging housing co-operatives, expanding into rural communities and using all unoccupied pieces of land.