A Government housing officer grabbed 250 residential stands under a State run development scheme in Masvingo. Kudakwashe Zvinavashe go...
A Government housing officer grabbed 250 residential stands
under a State run development scheme in Masvingo.
Kudakwashe Zvinavashe got the stands at Victoria Ranch in a
grab that shocked the Commission of Inquiry into sale of state land.
The Masvingo Mirror reports that Zvinavashe, a housing
officer in the Ministry of Local Government Public Works and National Housing
used his company called Stellenbosch to get the residential stands. Zvinavashe
was allocated the land in 2012 and left Government in 2017.
The commissioners said the conflict of interest involved in
the deal was obvious and shocking. Zvinavashe sat as a Government
representative in the consortium committees that were responsible for the
allocation of stands at Victoria Ranch.
Zvinavashe told the Commission that he didn’t see any
conflict of interest in the deal. He however, failed to produce most of the
documents required of him by the Commission. He could not produce his
application and offer letters for the stands.
The Commission ordered him to go and find the documents and
bring them. Zvinavashe said he had since sold most of the stands at prices of
$4 000 upwards.
“Do you not see that
as a Government official you were not supposed to be involved in all this? Did
you not have an unfair advantage that you were the one responsible for the
allocation of stands and you were at the same time busy getting the stands for
your company?” asked Dr Heather Chingono.
Justice Uchena said he would have understood it had
Zvinavashe got one stand for himself. He later said that he admitted wrong
doing.
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