Harare swallows Marondera, Norton and Mazowe

Harare swallows Marondera, Norton and Mazowe

• Harare grinds to halt as council workers strike

By Staff Reporter

HARARE will swallow the smaller towns of Norton, Marondera, Mazowe and Beatrice as new boundaries are drawn to satisfy a high demand for land in the city.

The Minister of Local Government, Public Works and Urban Development, Ignatius Chombo, said on Sunday that plans were underway to increase the city’s area so that more land could be set aside for housing.

According to the Greater Harare Master Plan, prepared several years ago, all most of urban areas immediately outside the city will eventually be incorporated into Harare as the city expands.

Chombo said Mashonaland East, Mashonaland West, and Mashonaland Central provinces would have to give up some land to Harare Metropolitan Province.

“Harare needs to expand. We need new boundaries,” said Chombo, while addressing mayors, provincial administrators and other senior local authority officials in Harare.

“We want to fix this so that we will not have problems with space for the next 50 years,” he added.

The minister said local authorities in the provinces were set to agree on the new boundaries before Friday.

A policy that will set a minimum area a house can cover, he said, would be operational by next week.

“We want to encourage houses to be built going upwards to save space,” Chombo said.

The local authorities also gave updates on the national mass reconstruction exercise – Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle, at the same meeting. The programme has been incorporated into the four-year National Housing Policy and National Housing Delivery Programme that will run until 2008.

Chombo urged the council officials to revise building by-laws, in tandem with new building standards set by the government, as a way of embracing the housing delivery agenda.

“The attainment of the Millennium Development Goals demands that we nurture a synergistic chemistry among the various players in the housing sector,” he said.

The government has set a target to construct 250 000 housing units annually until 2008.

President Robert Mugabe will soon tour all provinces to check progress on the reconstruction programme. Meanwhile, all local authorities were required to submit their 2006 budgets by October 31 to the ministry for approval. Chombo said councils should have put in place the administrative and legal processes relevant to budget preparation by the same date - Daily Mirror
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