The Zimbabwe government and civil servants have agreed to set up a Housing Trust Fund that will manage contributions made by civil servants towards a residential stands scheme that is being worked on by the employer.
The scheme will ensure that civil servant’s contributions, to be deducted from the Salary Service Bureau, is used for the housing project.
This comes as officials from the Public Works, Ministry of Local Government and National Housing and civil servants unions meet to finalise on designs and costs of the housing scheme.
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An MoU between the two parties has already been signed as Government moves in to give its workers non-monetary incentives.
The program is part of Government’s fulfillment of goals stipulated in Zim-Asset where it plans to offer 300 000 housing units to the people by 2018.
Mrs Cecilia Alexander, the Apex Council chairperson said a Trust Fund will ensure workers’ contributions were handled in a transparent manner.
“We have agreed to form a Trust Fund as a way of ensuring people’s monies are safe,” she said.
“The Trust Fund will be administered by the Apex Council, which is a body that represents civil servants and the Local Government Ministry. We want to ensure that the money specifically go towards housing development and nowhere else. We do not want to hear stories from the employer and this is the best way to go. Moreover, with a Trust Fund in place, it will also be easy for us to monitor the funds.”
She added that the Trust Fund would be established as soon as modalities were put in place.
“We have the contents of the constitution of the fund and it was also supposed to go through various legal offices such as the Attorney General’s office,” Mrs Alexander said.
“We are meeting tomorrow (today), having met again last week, to have a look at the final document and go on to the next stage.”
Mrs Alexander noted that the number of workers in need of stands has increased increase from the 121 000 initially registered initially.
Government is taking on board every worker including those who are not members of the Apex Council.
Initially the government had pegged the stands at US$4 per square metre to make sure they are affordable, with an additional dollar charged for administration fees.
The government has already started approaching district councils and municipalities so to secure land on which to roll out the program.
The housing program will help cushion civil servants who have seen many schemes being established in their names, but eventually benefiting outsiders and political bigwigs.
