Durban - A Senior Msunduzi Municipality official says they are experiencing challenges when dealing with invasions on privately owned land, saying municipal by-laws needed to be strengthened to curb the invasions.
Acting general manager for Sustainable Development and City Entities, Atkins Khoali, was presenting a report on how the KwaZulu-Natal capital was dealing with land invasions, during a council sitting last week.
He spoke about the frustration of holding people to account for invading privately owned land, as fines imposed by the courts were too low and did not act as a deterrent.
“Most of the invaders do not have a problem in paying the R2 500, which is a stipulated penalty for building on privately owned land. To them that money for building a structure is like a joke,” he told councillors.
Khoali blamed the current legislation that allows for small fines to be paid by those who had invaded land. He pointed out that the costs that were borne by the municipality in dealing with invaders showed that it was not getting a fair return on its efforts, and there needed to be better methods to deal with invasions.
The acting manager added that the City’s by-laws needed to be firmer with regard to invasions. In the past, privately owned land in areas such as Ashburton and Thornville has been invaded, with suggestions that some of the activity were organised by groups. Khoali said they would soon hire enforcement officers to tackle invasions.
“We are in the process of finalising the appointments, so even though we have had problems in the past we will soon be able to deal with this matter so that it does not become a regular habit in the municipality,” he told The Mercury.
He added that the problems were not as challenging when dealing with municipal-owned land because there was an Anti Land Invasion Unit that was conducting regular patrols on Cityowned land, but said it was believed that the appointment of enforcement officers would bring relief.
The report was approved council sitting.