Beneficiaries of houses under the City of Harare and CABS’ Budiro housing project claim that infrastructure deficiencies are compromising their standards of living and they have filed a petition for the developers to take urgent action on the matter.

Residents are demanding the rehabilitation of Marimba Road, speed humps on busy roads within the Budiriro 5 extension area, regular refuse collection, smell from Crowborough sewage plant, perpetual water cuts and facilitation of the electrification of their houses.

The Budiro housing project was born in late 2012 from an agreement between Harare City Council and Old Mutual Zimbabwe unit CABS. The project was to build 3,102 core houses for people with a low income. Uptake of the houses under the project has been slow and the Budiriro housing has not achieved its objectives.

An important member of the residents association said, “Old Mutual is taking clients for granted and giving a shoddy service. Their scheme is nothing compared to what Aspindale, Fidelity (Life) and NSSA are doing. We had agreed that as residents we would come out in our numbers and present our petition at CABS’ head office, after which we would demonstrate. The demo was, however, cancelled because police did not clear it.”

The rent to buy scheme was introduced last year and since then a total of 200 houses under the Budiriro housing project was purchased through this scheme. CABS introduced the rent to buy scheme after only 400 houses where initially purchased under initial terms.