NATIONAL Housing and Social Amenities minister Daniel Garwe says government will be constructing 1 000 housing units per month.
“We have
adopted the use of new technologies which I think next month you will see the
next block of flats being constructed which enables us to deliver at least 1000
units per month throughout the country,” Garwe said this last week while
touring Arlington Estates developed by Cardinal Corporation.
This has,
however, been dismissed as mere politicking and a dummy.
Almost half of
Zimbabweans are tenants and working in the informal sector, an indictment for a
country hoping to attain upper-middle income status by 2030.
According to
the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency
(ZimStat) 42,7% of those interviewed during the national population and housing
census have no place to call home.
Garwe noted
that Cardinal Corporation managed to respond to the dictates of the national
human policy settlement by processing nearly 600 title deeds for residents at
the estate.
“There are few
things that we are witnessing here. First is the developer’s response to the
dictates of the national human policy settlement that no houses will be built
before services are provided and that certificates of compliance are issued,
then title deeds processed. We are witnessing that developers have already
processed about 600 title deeds,” Garwe said.
He stated that
the provision of title deeds was going to stifle the operations of land barons
who have been allocating illegal settlements to desperate home seekers.
“That kills
land barons or informal human settlements” Garwe said.
Arlington
Estate has, however, been under the spotlight following utterances by Harare
Provincial Affairs and Devolution secretary Tafadzwa Muguti early this year
that houses built near Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport were in a
red zone.
“In terms of suggestions that this might be demolished, I
think it’s highly unlikely. The first
thing is any developer has to subscribe to the laws of the land which we have
done. We have been doing this for 16 years. It seems unusual that anyone would
want to demolish it in the sixteenth year,” Cardinal Corporation executive
chairperson Jeremy Brooke said. Newsday
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