Chitungwiza Ward 11 councillor Sten Warikandwa was dragged to court over the weekend to answer criminal abuse of duty charges in which he allegedly allocated stands without authority from the council.
Warikandwa’s duties, as a member of the housing committee, included the coordination of Housing Estates and approval of stands allocation.
It is the State’s case that in 2018, Warikandwa connived with the suspended Chitungwiza Town Clerk Rosemary Maridza and the then Chitungwiza housing director Alex Mukweva to create and allocate residential stands.
They were not following the laid down procedures as prescribed in Section 152 of the Urban Councils’ Act.
The State alleged that Maridza unprocedurally created a site plan, which consisted of six residential stands in Zengeza 2 on State Land which was reserved for an open space on the Chitungwiza Municipality layout plan.
She did this without Ministerial authority for a change of reservation as required by the Regional, Town and Country Planning Act.
Thereafter, Maridza handed over the six residential stands to Alex Mukweva and made false representations on verification forms that the stands existed on the Chitungwiza layout plan and that they were planned for residential use.
According to the state, Sten Warikandwa then conspired with Mukweva to have the stands allocated to Stanford Kugara and Costa Tichareva.
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Kugara and Tichareva never applied for the residential stands and were not on Chitungwiza Municipality waiting lists.
Mukweva allocated the remaining stands to individuals he hand-picked instead of allocating them to people who were already on the waiting lists.
Sten Warikandwa allegedly came with a fraudulent special power of attorney purporting that Kugara and Tichareva had given him full control over the stands.
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