HARARE City Council has warned of a third round of flooding in hard-hit Budiriro and Kuwadzana areas.
The warning comes barely a month after homes, furniture and a minor were swept away on Unity Day in the first wave resulting from Marimba River breaking its banks.
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Having experienced a delayed rainy season, Zimbabwe has been recording above-average rainfall, low-lying areas and illegal settlements on wetlands have fallen victim to flooding as a result.
A third wave is now expected, with Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume urging residents to either move to higher ground or seek accommodation at council vocational centres.
“The floods have subsided but we are told there is going to be a third flooding so people are still advised to remain alert, remain on higher ground, remove their property and themselves,” said Mafume.
“We are in charge of about 100 families and we have put them in our facilities at Budiriro and Kuwadzana.”
The illegal settlements on which most of the hundred families had been occupying has no access to clean water, no electricity, no sewer reticulation system and no roads.
Both council and government have failed to deal with the worsening scourge of land invasions.
Government recently revealed plans to evict all those living illegally on state land while councils have in the past descended on the settlements, razed down homes and forced families off the land, to human rights activists’ chagrin.
“For those that were allocated land legally and it is within an area where you cannot construct we are going to give them alternative land,” Mafume told journalists in December last year.
“For those that have gone and invaded land illegally. We are becoming uneasy as a council with the process of regularization of illegalities. We need to come up with a robust plan.
“We need to come with a ministry of housing. We have a national housing crisis as a country and as a city.”
