THE proposed sell of properties owned by Harare City Council (HCC) to sitting tenants at discounted prices has been put on hold after city fathers sniffed a potentially scandalous deal in which a former senior council staffer became the first to offer to buy a house he occupied during his term of office.
Council has strongly objected to Dombo Chibanda’s bid to be the new owner of an up market property in the capital’s leafy suburb of Eastlea which he still uses despite having left its employ about a year ago.
Chibanda had worked as HCC’s director of waste management and social amenities.
Council sources said Chibanda, who had a turbulent exit at Town House, applied to buy the house immediately after he learnt that council had adopted a resolution to offer its properties to sitting tenants at hugely discounted prices of up to 50 percent of the market value, as it seeks to comply with a government directive.
This was after former local government, public works and national housing minister, Ignatius Chombo, instructed council to dispose of its houses to sitting tenants in the national interest in June.
City fathers smelt a rat at a recent full council meeting over the issue after two council committees rushed to approve the sale of number 4, Cumberland Street. The sale was, however, immediately overturned.
Documents in possession of the Financial Gazette indicate that the Education, Health, Housing and Community Services committee and the Finance and Development Committee met separately to consider the application and approved it.
It was acting Harare Town Clerk, Josephine Ncube, in her capacity as corporate services and housing director, who recommended the sale to the committees.
“The committee had before it a report (19th June 2015) by the corporate services and housing director (Ncube) seeking authority to sell the house to Dombo Chibanda, a former council employee who was a sitting tenant to the property in question,” partly read the uniform minutes of the two committee meetings.
The committees then shared notes and agreed to recommend council to adopt the resolution but the motion was dismissed and referred back to the committees for further consideration.
Harare deputy mayor, Thomas Muzuva, led the onslaught on the deal saying it must be fully investigated to allay any fears before council could deliberate on it.
This, he said, has the potential to open a can of worms given that many of the city’s senior employees use council properties and could sense an opportunity to grab cheap houses.
Council then ordered the housing and community services committee off the deal so that the finance committee could exclusively handle it.
Muzuva said as it stands, there were many grey areas that need to be attended to before any further action could be taken.
“This scheme is exclusively for those people without alternative accommodation who are really in need of the houses, so we need to find out if the former director doesn’t have another property which would disqualify him,” he said, adding:“We need to be very careful to avoid a situation whereby we set a precedence in which every senior employee who occupies a council property buys it for a song on retirement. What should not be forgotten is the fact that proceeds from these sales should be ring fenced to build a new social housing stock to assist those in need and we will not be doing justice to it if we sell to those who are already well up.”
Council also resolved that a proper valuation process be initiated in order to ensure that there are no losses incurred during disposal of the properties.
“For example, the committee report only talks about the valuation of the stand and we do not know whether we are selling a stand or a house. So we have requested that the whole matter be looked into before it is brought back to council for scrutiny. These issues demand us to be thorough,” said Muzuva.
Chibanda had a turbulent relationship with suspended Town Clerk, Tendai Mahachi who, in 2009, suspended him on allegations of faking operational licenses when he was deputy director for health services. Chibanda was also accused of refusing to close a restaurant whose conditions did not comply with the Public Health Act.
Last year, troubles mounted for Chibanda when Mahachi again suspended him for poor performance as director for waste management, in a bizarre development which saw Mahachi himself temporarily taking over the duties.
The former director was also fingered in the salary scandal in which city bosses allegedly gave themselves hefty perks at the expense of service delivery. His salary was reported in the press to be US$34 299 per month.
Chibanda was one of those who were sent on early retirement in June last year. financial gazette