By Maria Caspani
LONDON (AlertNet) - Zimbabwe's government must provide better housing or compensation for hundreds of thousands of people living in shacks five years after a programme of forced evictions, human rights and residents groups said on Tuesday.
Amnesty International Zimbabwe and the Coalition Against Forced Evictions said the unity government, created in February 2009, has done nothing to improve the living conditions of more than 700,000 people who lost their homes and jobs when the authorities began demolishing informal settlements in May 2005.
The policy, called Operation Murambatsvina, forced people to move into rural areas, overcrowded urban housing or government-designated settlements. Most have been driven deeper into poverty, made worse by the country's economic crisis, the groups said.
"It is a scandal that five years on, victims are left to survive in plastic shacks without basic essential services," Amnesty International Zimbabwe director Cousin Zilala said in a statement. "The needs of these victims are at risk of being forgotten because their voices are consistently ignored."
Felistas Chinyuku was forced to leave Porta Farm, a settlement of around 10,000 people which was destroyed by the government in 2005, despite court orders barring the evictions.
"Many of us are still living in tents," said Chinyuku, now a resident at Hopley Farm on the outskirts of Harare. "There are no schools, no health services and very little sanitation. This is no way for humans to live."
The 2005 evictions sparked worldwide condemnation, pushing the Zimbabwean government to launch a rehousing programme, dubbed Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle, later that year.
But Amnesty International and the Coalition Against Forced Evictions described it as a "dismal failure", saying it appears to have been abandoned.
"The few houses that were built under the Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle scheme are completely uninhabitable," said Zilala.
"They have no floors, windows, water or toilets. Communities living in designated resettlement areas are dependent on humanitarian assistance and self-help initiatives for their survival."
HOUSING SHORTAGE
Residents of the Hatcliffe Extension settlement in Harare are among those whose properties were destroyed by the authorities, ignoring previous lease agreements.
They have yet to receive any compensation, and are battling against demands for prohibitive fees to renew their leases.
"Operation Murambatsvina achieved the opposite of the publicly stated objective - restoring order," said Lorraine Mupasiri of the Combined Harare Residents Association, one of the coalition partners. "In Harare, it resulted in overcrowding in poor neighbourhoods with as many as three families sharing a four-roomed house."
There is a rising housing backlog in Harare, she added, with more than half a million people on the waiting list.
Another impact of the evictions was that traders - many of them women - were driven from their market stalls, leaving them without a business and an income, according to Amnesty and its partners.
On Monday, coalition representatives were scheduled to meet with Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to hand over a petition from Operation Murambatsvina victims and their supporters.
Hit by drought, HIV/AIDS and economic meltdown in recent years, Zimbabwe has one of the lowest life expectancies in the world, and more than half its population is dependent on food aid.
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