November 20, 2013
The government is not going back on its decision to demolish illegal structures despite wide-spread criticism of the programme, a deputy minister said in Parliament Wednesday.
Responding to a Parliament motion raised by Kambuzuma legislator Willias Madzimure during question time, deputy local government minister Joel Biggie Matiza, said the ministry will never tolerate people staying on areas such wetlands.
“Government will not tolerate people staying in wetlands; government will not tolerate people staying on top of sewer lines. Government will never, never tolerate people building on school sites,” Matiza said.
“We have come up with a programme were we did meet the people who are affected. We have met them and we have told them what we want to do and they fully understand,” he said.
He said the demolitions would start once an audit being compiled by the teamed they commissioned is completed.
“What we then did was to send an audit team and the audit team has completed and they are now compiling a report. Based on that report we are going to take action that will help those guys who are illegally settled in very dangerous areas.”
On the issue of violating human rights Matiza said the people who are illegally settled are not only violating their rights but also violating the rights of school children.
“The issue of human rights is being addressed in the sense that people are putting up structures in school sites not taking care of the rights of children who are to move so many kilometres to the next school, so we are addressing human rights in that form,” said Matiza.
“The human right of a person who is building on a sewer land is violating his own right. So we would want that person to stay on a proper place that does not harm him or her. We will allocate the best place and health place for these people.”
Last week over 200 illegal tuckshops and houses were destroyed in Runyararo, Zimre and Damofalls.
Opposition MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai condemned the exercise during a tour of affected areas in Ruwa last week.
“It was callous and overzealous,” said the former prime minister.
“A lot of people are dependent on these shops not only for service but for income and it was very inhumane for Zanu PF to destroy the shops.”
“It is vindictive and there is no rationale for Zanu PF to demolish the people’s properties and worse still it brought back the realities of 2005 Murambatsvina,” the MDC-t leader said as he called on the government to immediately stop the demolitions.
In 2005 government of Zimbabwe carried out Operation Murambatsvina which left more than 700,000 people homeless.
Source: All Africa
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