By CHUSA SICHONE –
THE Government has come up with stringent measures to curb corruption in land allocation and upgrade slums.

. KAMPYONGO

Local Government and Housing Minister Stephen Kampyongo announced in Lusaka yesterday that the Government was formulating a policy aimed at addressing the hurdles in land allocation by councils and bringing sanity to slums for the residents to afford decent housing.
The policy in question is targeting to, among other things, ensure that people in townships like Chibolya and Misisi have decent and affordable housing.
On land allocation, the minister took a swipe at councils for failing to effectively manage land matters and ordered them to improve on their planning to stem rampant corruption.
“So we are trying to put a stop to some of these things and my ministry has actually passed an Act of Parliament called Urban Planning Act, which has been signed into law and now will need to be enforced,” he said.
Mr Kampyongo has since directed the new National Housing Authority (NHA) board to come up with a comprehensive policy which would harmonise all programmes related to housing infrastructure in the country.
“We are working on a policy as directed by the President of the Republic of Zambia.
“We are working on a comprehensive policy that will harmonise all programmes that are to deal with housing infrastructure,” he said.
He added: “Going forward, we want this policy to address some of the challenges that we have ignored, unplanned settlements that we have.
“We have got unplanned settlements, the ones called slums, which are even closer to the CBD (central business district).”
He said the solution could not be found in buying off people living in such areas by individuals or companies with the financial muscle for commercial purposes, as has been the case.
Mr Kampyongo observed that there was a likelihood that those people who had been bought off would start unplanned settlements elsewhere.
“That (buying off) hasn’t been the solution, so we are saying let’s have a policy that will take care of those people that are already living in these slums.
“If you go into Misisi, why don’t you develop infrastructure there that should be able to absorb some of those people who are living there then you develop those areas? That’s how you develop and that’s how you keep your people,” Mr Kampyongo said.
On land management, Mr Kampyongo said councils were supposed to be planning for all the areas, but that lack of planning had resulted in “organised confusion” of allocating land anywhere after being paid.
He described land mismanagement as a cancer which needed to be amputated to restore sanity.
Mr Kampyongo also said Government was trying to build capacity in councils for them to implement the Decentralisation Policy and the Local Government Service Commission had been tasked to recruit competent, qualified and experienced staff.
Currently, all the councils countrywide were being audited to ensure that the Local Government Service Commission selected capable personnel to implement the Decentralisation Policy.
Mr Kampyongo said this when he addressed Patriotic Front officials at the National Project for Poverty Reduction in Lusaka yesterday.