Bulawayo City Council avails 5,000 housing stands

THE Bulawayo City Council (BCC) has availed more than 5 000 housing stands in the city as they push towards addressing the ever ballooning housing backlog, a senior council official has said.

The local authority has further regularised 8 053 stands at Cowdray Park Hlalani Kuhle to ease the accommodation burden being faced by residents.
Making a presentation during a media briefing held at the council chambers yesterday, assistant director in the department of housing and community services, Mr Dictor Khumalo, revealed that while their housing backlog was pegged at 115 000, the city had put in place a number of projects to reduce the housing waiting list.

"As from 2016 to date, we have 1 306 stands where servicing is currently in progress. These stands are in Magwegwe North (391), Magwegwe West (494), Emganwini (366), Tshabalala Extension (44) and Southwold (11).

"In terms of future allocations, which we have already started working on, we have 4 436 stands in Emganwini (1 350), Killarney East (787), Mahatshula East (670), Luveve North (302), EMhlangeni phase two (541), Pumula South (275) and Highmount (217)," said Mr Khumalo.

He revealed that in Woodville they had 144 of which 80 had already been sold while in Mahatshula East they had 670 stands under the CBZ partnership.

"In Cowdray Park Hlalani Kuhle of the 8 690 stands there of which we have regularised 8 053, 637 are being attended to and we hope they will be finalised soon. Remember that in that suburb we had a problem of double allocation, therefore, this was what we were addressing there, to ensure that everyone at least gets a stand," said the assistant director.

He said that under the pre-sell strategy, the city required residents to pay 35 percent of the selling price as down payment plus 15 percent Value Added Tax, of which a stand measuring 200 square metres was pegged at $4 500.

"Last year we relaxed our demand for the payment of the deposit fee where it is now payable within 60 days. The balance is then payable over an 18-month period. The funds are then ring-fenced and used for servicing more stands," said Mr Khumalo.

Meanwhile, the assistant director revealed that the housing waiting list would soon be computerised to eliminate complications arising from using both digital and manual forms of the list.

"We have both a manual and digital list, which is pegged at 115 000 as at the beginning of this month. However, we are in the process of digitalising the whole list, it is unfortunate that along this process we came across a hurdle when our system crashed but we are now back on track.

"What we require from residents is that they pay $16 per year for them to be under our waiting list, most of the times they have to continually renew their forms yearly, we hope that after we digitalise our list we will have a more accurate figure," he said.

The issue of housing is a national problem with the country's backlog estimated to be more than two million.

President Mugabe in 2013 launched the revised National Housing Policy in Harare in a concrete step towards solving the problem.

He said Government was considering self-contained human settlements at the periphery of major urban centres as a means of decongesting cities.