River Valley Properties, a residential housing development company in Bulawayo has filed an urgent High Court application seeking to bar its clients, a group of aggrieved civil servants from “invading” their work premises.
The application comes after the civil servants, under Mahlaba Housing Scheme Beneficiaries, petitioned the company to deliver residential stands they had been allegedly paying for, for the past ten years.
The beneficiaries, who are over four hundred in total, allege that the company is failing to keep its end of the bargain by not delivering stands for over ten years.
Part of the beneficiaries went to hand-deliver their petition on April 3, 2024.
In the court application, River Valley, the Applicant, cited 81 members of the scheme as respondents.
River Valley alleged that the civil servants were threatening a demonstration at the company offices, and further alleged that when they came to deliver the petition they were violent.
“Respondents unilaterally opted out of the contract between the Applicants and Respondents, and are therefore not in good standing. Disputes have arisen between the Applicant and Respondents in the above regard,” the application reads.
“Respondents have organised to rectify contractual matters by assembling, demonstrating use of violence at Applicant business premises situated at 4″ Avenue and George Silundika Street, Bulawayo and in the process invade Applicant’s and its employees right to peacefully and without disturbance go about their business.
“Thus in purporting to exercise whatever right Respondents may have, Respondents may not do so by invading Applicant’s and its employees’ rights. Applicant thus seeks an interdict. in terms of the draft order herein attached to prevent Respondent’s intended invasion of Applicant’s rights.”
