By SAM PHIRI –
LOCAL Government and Housing Minister John Phiri has warned of stern action against lax council employees involved in corrupt practices when executing sensitive duties like issuance of title deeds.

. Dr Phiri

Dr Phiri said his ministry was in the process of ensuring that all departments in the councils countrywide were cleaned up to raise the standards of operations in all areas to regain public confidence  in local authorities.
The Minister’s warning comes in the wake of a recent development in which a 66-year-old man of Kamwala, Daniel Kafula, was nearly duped of his house and wrongly detained in the council police cell for three hours.
Dr Phiri said there had been some extreme situations where five or more people would be chasing title deeds for a single property, a situation he said would not be condoned anymore.
The Minister said he was aware of anomalies in councils, especially in the estate department.
He said the ministry had instituted policy guidelines meant to guide workers in their operations to avoid errors.
Dr Phiri said council workers who were in the habit of engaging in fraudulent activities and abrogating policies would not go unpunished.
“I am warning erring council employees, and this does not only apply to Lusaka City Council only but all the municipalities across the country. We shall sternly deal with anyone found wanting. We have to clean up and raise the standards of the councils,” Dr Phiri said.
Lusaka City Council (LCC) public relations manager Habeenzu Mulunda admitted that LCC had a lot of lapses in the deeds department and that the local authority was re-engineering the system to seal loopholes of corruption.
Mr Mulunda said the local authority was waiting for the legal suit from Mr Kafula over his house and that it would act accordingly as directed by the courts.
“The problem of issuing title deeds to wrong persons has for a long time been caused by too many handlers and the long time taken to process the documents,” Mr Mulunda said.
“So we are digitalising the system to cut out on the issue of corruption.”
Mr Mulunda said in the case of Mr Kafula, the documents might have possibly been altered because they were manually handled by different people, some of who would ask for bribes in the process.
Mr Kafula has threatened to take legal action against LCC after accusing the local authority of wanting to sell his house to a Solly Patel and for wrongly detaining him for three hours.