Hard times beckons for the ruling Zanu PF’s Kadoma losing legislator Fanuel Phiri who is embroiled in a nasty fight with local youths accusing him of trying to grab their mine.
Phiri was initially appointed patron for Black Diamonds mining co-operative owned by youths during his tenure as MP before he allegedly changed goal posts and went behind their back to change papers for the application of lease of land, removing names of beneficiaries replacing with those of his family members.
Sources say the losing MP allegedly took advantage of his close links to Kadoma council where he served as the last executive mayor, giving him access “to manipulate the town clerk’s secretary” to gain access to the cooperative’s application for special grant of town land in which he allegedly swapped beneficiaries’ names.
The land in question is behind Cottco and Cold Storage Company a few kilometres outside the CBD.
Phiri’s move hit a brick wall during a recent Special full council meeting in which some of the interested parties of Black Diamonds cooperatives blew the whistle after noticing that he had swapped names of beneficiaries with those of his family members and relatives.
The disgruntled youths who pleaded for anonymity for fear of victimisation furnished this reporter with all the documents which Phiri tried to temper with and also narrated what transpired during the process.
“We applied for a lease of land from council in good faith with Phiri while he was still MP only to be later advised that council had blocked the processing of our papers citing tempering of documents. We then inquired and discovered that Phiri had removed names of 16 youths executive members and replaced with elderly people prompting council to halt as the application was made for youths.
“The anomaly was then corrected, but it is now taking long again for us to access our land after Phiri approached council again through a lawyer that he is suddenly interested on the very same land that we had clashed with him,” said the fired up youths.
“The Town Clerk said he will deliberate on the issue on Monday as he is away on council business. We plead with relevant authorities to assist us we are sick and tired of this G40 element tormenting us.
“Everything he has from his place of residence (farm), it’s either he grabbed it or it was a donation in the name of Zanu PF which he has been putting into disrepute for years now. Times have changed he should not block us from benefitting from empowerment programmes,” added the youths.
Phiri could not be immediately reached for a comment as his mobile number was unavailable.
