Stop this madness of demolishing Houses in Kitwe – Matambo
Opposition UPND Chairperson for the Copperbelt province Elisha Matambo has demanded that Kitwe City Council stops the razing of houses in the city.
In a statement released to Zambian Eye, Friday morning, June 6, 2014, Matambo described the razing of houses in Kitwe’s Mindolo North as madness and said must be stopped immediately.
Below is Matambo’s statement:
Colleagues, democracy is defined as Government of the people, for the people and by the people. The short of it is that, when a Government is given mandate by the people, it is not in order for a Government to abdicate its responsibilities to the people. Illegality should never be condoned in our society. That is why we should frown on it when it shows up.
However as we do that we should look at why a law is being broken in the first place. Once we identify the cause, we address that cause. The case of houses being razed in Kitwe cannot go without comment. The City Councils are very much culprits as those people that are alleged to have committed the crime. The council has systems of awarding land that are peculiar and only benefit the councils themselves and not the people they claim to exist for.
Councils advertise plots and no citizen ever accesses land but council employees; and later the same plots are sold by council officials exorbitantly. Can you then blame people for not following procedures to acquire land. Those people who’s houses are being razed down applied for plots but were turned down for not showing evidence that they could develop properties.
But today the council is razing houses of the same people that did not show evidence of capacity to develop. So can we really trust the council and the PF Government. They say the piece of land was earmarked for commercial development. Is the council saying commercial land is available but not residential land? What kind of priorities are those? And yet someone is going round the country saying PF is a pro-poor Government!
We are saddened by this development and we demand that the Kitwe City Council stops this madness and give people land where they will build houses immediately. This is in the middle of winter and who demolishes someone’s house in the middle of winter? This is not acceptable to the UPND and should not be acceptable to any normal human being.
Elisha Matambo
UPND Provincial Chairperson