A PALTRY 27 out of 1 278 sitting tenants in council-rented
houses in Dzivarasekwa 3 have taken up an offer by the Harare City Council to
buy the properties on a rent-to-buy basis, a council official revealed Friday.
Addressing a meeting between the Combined Harare Residents
Association (CHRA) and City of Harare officials at Dzivarasekwa Community
Centre, district officer for the area, Shepherd Tonderai Mawire, said the low
uptake of the houses was as a result of huge arrears which residents owed to
council.
He said an assessment by the local authority had proved
that old age, which resulted in incapacity to pay, had contributed to the low
uptake.
“One of the conditions for one to buy the house from
council was to clear their arrears. From 2013 when the offer was made to
December 2018 when it closed, only 27 houses had been sold to sitting tenants,”
he said.
The district officer said most of the tenants were very old
and of foreign origin, who were even struggling to make ends meet and could,
therefore, hardly afford to buy the houses.
Council, he said, was looking at ways of helping those who
had reached advanced age so they could retain ownership of the houses.
He said council had valued the houses, mostly in Dzivarasekwa
3, at $10 000 with discounts depending on the number of years one would have
stayed at the house, with those who had lived there for 30 years and above
getting a 50% discount.
Mawire said the offer had lapsed, adding they were now
waiting for a council resolution on how they would proceed to sell the
remaining houses.
However, it emerged during the meeting that what
constituted the bulk of the arrears that most residents owed to council were
charges for “illegal structures” which were seven times higher than normal
council rentals.
As a result, residents’ representatives argued, most of the
residents who otherwise would have qualified for the offer had been
disenfranchised because of council’s dubious billing system.
“A lot of people were disenfranchised because of the
improper billing by council. We are not saying people don’t have to pay, but we
have problems with the quantum of some of the bills. You cannot have someone in
a high-density area owing $13 000, especially considering that all debts were
cleared in 2013,” said Hardlife Mudzingwa, project manager at Water Alliance. Newsday
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