Mafume caught offside over ‘uninformed” utterances on illegal structures at Raylton Sports Club

Harare – THE National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) has castigated the Harare Mayor for besmirching the entity over illegal structures at Raylton Sports Club which NRZ infact instituted legal proceedings for an eviction to be actioned.

In a statement released Wednesday, NRZ said the Mayor should have easily consulted with the Town Clerk before making uninformed utterances.

“NRZ has a pending eviction court case in the High Court against the constructors of the illegal structures with COH as co-respondents.

” Given the foregoing, we are surprised that His Worship the Mayor was unaware of the actual facts on the ground, which he could have easily confirmed with the Town Clerk’s office before going to Parliament.

” If he had checked things properly, he would have applauded our efforts to evict the illegal occupants,” read part of the statement.

Appearing before Parliament ‘s Public Accounts Committee, the mayor insinuated that NRZ was behind the construction of tuckshops on the land leases to NRZ by council.

NRZ said the tuck-shops are illegal structures which are a result of a fraudulent collusion between a former Harare Raylton bartender and the illegal occupiers through event hire permits misconstrued as leases.

“The City of Harare (COH), acting on the event hire permits proceeded to approve the construction of the illegal structures without the blessing of the parent leaseholder who is NRZ.

” On discovering the anomaly, the NRZ then wrote to the City of Harare objecting to the approvals of those building plans for tuck-shops on the basis that there was no official lease with NRZ and that it conflicted heavily with the authorised land use per NRZ’s subsisting lease with the COH, which only permits use of land for sporting, recreation and incidental social events, ” read part of the statement.

The culprits behind the illegal constructions have since been arrested.