Loud Ramakgapola
Thupeyo Muleya, Beitbridge Bureau
BEITBRIDGE Town Council has started allocating 1,200 stands that were serviced by two private property developers in Dulibadzimu suburb.
The town secretary, Loud Ramakgapola, said they engaged Forit and SDP Africa to service 2,600 residential stands last year.
He said the local authority had allocated SDP Africa 2,106 stands and 500 to Forit with 1,200 of them having already been serviced.
“Civil works started in March last year and we expect the stands to be ready for occupation as soon as they are connected to water and sewer reticulation,” Ramakgapola said.
“The whole idea is to address accommodation problems in this town and meet the ZimAsset target on mass housing.
Our housing backlog stands at around 10,000 and the demand for houses continues to grow with each passing day”.
Ramakgapola said high density stands were available to anyone on their housing waiting list.
He said the property developers were servicing stands in three phases and the stands would have tarred roads, water and sewer reticulation facilities before occupation.
The town secretary said they were also courting other land developers who were interested in building houses for the community in the serviced area on a cost recovery basis.
“We are also open to private public partnerships with those players interested in constructing more water reservoir tanks around the town.
“You will note that the government has constructed a new water treatment plant with ten-fold pumping capacity and we are short on holding tanks.
“This means that we will have to pump water for 24 hours if we are to supply all the households in this town including those that are being serviced” said Ramakgapola.
He said they were also seeking partnerships with other development agencies to connect water and sewer reticulation facilities to over 2,000 residential stands which were allocated to people between 2005 and 2011.