By Correspondent
The Marondera Town Council has continued selling or exchanging land to finance service delivery issues despite a warning and reprimands by the Auditor General in the last audit report.
Councilors in the Marondera Works and Environmental Management Committee recently passed a resolution which agreed that council should sell land and raise money to upgrade service delivery.
“The committee agreed to refer to Full Council for further deliberations, that council should sell land and the money raised should be used to rehabilitate the sewer and water treatment plant,” reads the minutes.
Cllr Size Vilela then proposed that council should engage or be in partnership with companies that deal with sewer reticulation so that council gives land in exchange with products.
Cllr Mubaiwa Dzvuke concurred saying council should sell land so that it can be able to fund the said projects.
The move is indirect contravention of an AG report which said the practice violates the Urban Council’s Act.
Marondera was identified as one of the local authorities that use land to finance their operations or pay for goods and services.
“During the year under review, the Municipality of Marondera was financing recurrent expenditure through swaps with stands.
“The Municipality was not using Estate Funds as specified by the Urban Councils Act (Chapter 29:15), section 300.
“I observed that Storey Marketing Hardware, a company that supplies protective clothing wrote a letter to the Municipality requesting the amounts owed to the hardware to be paid by allocation of stands and the Municipality agreed,” the AG, Mildred Chiri said in her report on local authorities.
A few years ago, the local authorities also offered 150 hectares of land to Mega Market in exchange of luxury vehicles and heavy equipment.
