Zambia: 'I Was Offered Four Plots'
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The Times of Zambia (Ndola)
2 August 2008
Posted to the web 4 August 2008
Joseph Banda
FORMER Lands minister, Gladys Nyirongo, yesterday told a Lusaka magistrate's court that she was offered four plots but turned them down because her conscience was not going to be clear.
Nyirongo who yesterday opened her defence before magistrate, Sharon Newa said that ministry of Lands acting senior lands and deeds officer, Daisy Mulenga asked her for four different national registration cards (NRCs) so that she could be offered plots in Lusaka's Foxdale area.
This is in a case in which Nyirongo is charged in the first count with abuse of office after she allegedly between January 1 and February 22, 2006, being a person employed in the public service, directed a lands officer to generate offer letters of land in Foxdale, Chamba Valley in Lusaka to 10 people.
In the second count, Nyirongo is accused of abusing her position by directing a junior technical officer in the ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives to sub-divide a former Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM) farm number F/390a in contravention of the land alienation procedures and created property number 1/19634/m for her between October 1, 2006 and February 28, 2007.
She said Ms Mulenga had gone to her office and asked her for four NRCs in different names so that she could be given land but that she refused to give her the cards because she knew that her conscience would not be clear.
"After I refused to give her the NRCs, she then told me that it was tradition for the ministry to give land to a minister when it was allocating land. But I still refused to give her any cards," she said.
She also denied ever directing Ms Mulenga to generate nine offer letters because there was no way a minister could access a junior officer leaving the lands commissioner and that she did not know some of the people she was alleged to have given plots.
She said she was not related to Precious Njovu although she could remember Mr Peter Ngulube as one of the people who were referred to her office.
She also said that although she had a son called Walinase Nyirongo she did not know a Mr Walinase Nyirongo Bwalya who was said to be a beneficiary of a plot and that although she knew a Mr Peter Kapolyo, he was not her relative.
She said a Mr Mickey Mumba was her son-in-law but did not pass through her office when he acquired the plot while Nyirongo Isaac Janet was not her relative and that a Mr Bruce Chipasha could be a handicapped person who she helped acquire land.
Nyirongo said she relied on the 1985 land circular when she executed her duties as minister because she discovered that there was no proper system of land administration.
She said the land circular explained the powers of a minister, commissioner of lands and councils in land administration although the lands commissioner was empowered by the President to grant land with special permission from the minister.
She said as Lands minister she had reserved powers that she could exercise to even override the commissioner's decision if there was a protest as long as guidelines were properly followed.
The hearing continues.
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