Gweru puts land developers on notice

Source: Gweru puts land developers on notice – The Southern Eye

GWERU City Council has threatened to withdraw contracts of underperforming land developers in the Mkoba 21 housing project which remains incomplete a decade on.

Beneficiaries of the housing project bought the stands 10 years ago, but servicing of the land is yet to be completed to allow them to start building houses.

Mayor Martin Chivhoko said council would engage the developers to revise their contracts to push progress on the scheme.

“We are engaging our developers because we want to re-look at contracts that were signed between the council and them,” Chivhoko said.

“Some of the developers are not on the ground so we want to deal with that issue and cancel the contracts if need be. We are talking of about 6 000 stands in Mkoba 21 so we will give an extra 1 000 stands (as incentive) to those (developers) who would have finished their work.”

Last year, council offered beneficiaries of the Mkoba 21 stands agreement of sale contracts, nine years after homeseekers purchased the properties.

The recipients bought the stands in 2014, but in 2018 they threatened to pull out of the scheme owing to the slow pace of servicing of the area.

Servicing of the stands was delayed after land developers contracted by council lagged in getting environmental impact assessment certificates.

Three developers namely CASAS, Wackdrive and Sheasham were contracted to develop the residential stands.