Ex-Council Worker In Court For Forging Site Plan

By Wendy Kusema
A 42-year-old former Chaminuka Rural District Council (R.D.C) worker appeared at Bindura Magistrate court last week facing allegations of crafting a fake site plan in order to dupe council of 21 stands.

Leading the State, Sheila Maribha told the court that sometime in 2015, Chaminuka RDC applied for a proposed layout plan for a petrol service station at Chakonda Rural Shamva from Mashonaland Central’s department of Physical Planning.

The planning office produced the proposed petrol service station site plan for with a tracing register number MCA928 and no extra stands were on the plan serve for the service station.

During the period between 2019 to 2020, Kumbirai Dumbujena (42) crafted a site plan titled “Proposed Commercial and Service Station at Chakonda Rural Service Council” with 13 commercial stands measuring 300m² and eight measuring 180m² each. He also included the service station stand.

However, the stands were not pegged by the department of Physical Planning Contrary in accordance to Section 10(b) of the Regional Town and Country Planning Act.

Dumbujena allegedly inserted the Physical Planning department’s tracing register number MCA928 onto to the forged plan.

However, he was not aware that in order to create additional stands on a site plan, council is supposed to apply to the Department of Physical Planning noting its intention to create additional stands.

The department then goes on to site and if satisfied with the proposal then creates a site plan, which they sign against. They also take note of the tracing number in their register before sending a copy of the plan to council.

Due to his ignorance after forging the plan, Dumbujena purportedly misrepresented to the council that the stands were pegged by the Department of Physical Planning and that his site plan was also produced by the department.

He went on to submit the fake site plan to the Housing and Community Service Department for allocation of the stands.

The stands were subsequently allocated to a total of seven beneficiaries from 6 May 2020 to 16 February 2021 before the fraudulent act was discovered.

The presiding magistrate remanded the case to a later date and he will return to court by way of summons. Nhau/Indaba