By Risco Lumamezi
SPOKESPERSON of Zambezi Business People’s Forum (ZBPF), Mr. George Simataa has called on government to intervene on the Katima Mulilo Town Council’s demolishing saga of illegal settlers of the urban land in Kaima Mulilo as a matter of urgency.
He told reporters at a press conference on Monday that most of the businesses in Katima Mulilo have been affected especially small and medium enterprises.
According to him, the demolishing of houses has affected the SMEs holders who sell on streets, workers including school going kids whose parents are without shelters as this will affect their studies.
“This has really affected the whole system; they are other way how to deal with this”
He condemned the land grabbing as a wrong thing, though he suggested that “may be they are tired of waiting list to be allocated with the plots”
“I feel that the council and the community including the governor should talk about this”
Mr. Simataa accused the Katima Mulilo Town Council Chief Executive Officer Mr. Raphael Liswaniso’s remarks on calling people poor as not the right thing.
“He is less than 6 months in office, what more if he stays for a year how are we going to survive?” quashed Mr.Simataa.
Zambezi Business People’s Forum’s Spokesman, who is also a child of the liberation struggle, added that “our new CEO is having mentality of the Boers; our parents went for the liberation struggle because of the land”
He stressed that home owners of the houses which were destroyed should be compensated “the government was supposed to intervene on the matter at the very day it seems they are enjoying”
However, Mr. Billy Lutaka Zambezi Business People’s Forum Secretary for External Affairs warned that the issue of land is a political issue instead the Katima Mulilo Town Council wants to make it as a commercial business.
He therefore added that poverty levels in the region is very high, which has gone drastically at this moment when homes of the people are destroyed.
Mr.Lutaka urged Katima Council to create a reception area for the people whose homes have been destroyed and compensation packages.
He further accused the Katima Council for taking law into their own hands without the court eviction order and he denounced that the municipal law (proclamation of 1984) which mandate them to evict people without court order is not valid as this law was repealed.
Meanwhile, Minister of Urban and Rural Development Sophia Shaningwa held a closed door press conference on Monday with the national broadcaster (NBC) without other media houses at Katima Mulilo Town Council during her official site visit to Bukalo Village Council where she inaugurated houses.
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