EPWORTH: Squatters fight council regularisation, plus mushrooming of informal settlements

By Marshall Bwanya: Epworth, Local Board District (LBD) has bemoaned that the large number informal settlements within the suburb and its periphery have been a major stumbling block to regularise stands and deliver adequate service delivery.

LBD chairperson, Councillor Batanai Masunda, said the mushrooming of informal settlements in Epworth were undermining their efforts to achieve town status and deliver adequate service delivery.

“The informal settlements because of their haphazard locations are inhibiting our efforts to get town status affecting our performance to provide: roads accessibility, public lighting, provision of piped water and others”.

“Epworth’s regularisation program is aimed at putting settlers in order, so that we move forward.

“Some institutions that are supposed to be constructed are failing to take off because the areas are currently occupied.

“Some who bought commercial and industrial stands are failing to access their stands due to the illegal settlers who are sometimes resisting to move,” he said.

Masunda reiterated that regularisation would boost revenue as they would have a database of all potential revenue inflows.

Only informal settlers that migrated to Epworth back in the 1990s are currently paying service rates, while other informal settlers that migrated in the suburb in the early and late 2000s are not paying.

Most local businesses in Epworth are also operating freely without paying any service rates to LBD, also depriving the local authority of revenue inflows that could potentially improve service delivery.

The bulk of informal settlements in Epworth were illegally parceled out by land barons.

Masunda said land barons were still illegally selling stands and were in the habit of influencing informal settlers to resist relocation.

“Informal settlers must acknowledge that they are illegally occupying state land, no matter how they came to be there, because most were allocated the land by land barons masquerading as political party leaders.

“Usually they are the ones influencing some settlers to resist relocation. Some also who are engaging in criminal activities do not would not want order as their activities will be exposed.

“On the humanitarian side, we are so much cognisant of the economic hardships that our residents currently face, it is a national crisis. Nevertheless, for the sake of progress they must move to pave way for development processes.

Epworth Resident Development Association (ERDA) Secretary General Peter Nyapetwa argued that some rate payers in Epworth were not getting adequate service delivery for which they were paying for.

“Our council is absolutely doing nothing in Epworth there is no garbage collection, severe water shortages, poor service delivery and houses in Epworth have no modern sewage system.

“There are a lot of issues to do with corruption that involved the council, we are actually appealing if it is possible for Local Governance minister to facilitate a forensic audit so that we are informed how ratepayers money is being used,” he said.

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