EASTERN Province permanent secretary Chanda Kasolo has ordered PF cadres who have encroached on land belonging to Zambia Railways

Limited to move out or risk being arrested and charged with criminal trespass.

And Chipata mayor Sinoya Mwale says the council did not allocate plots to anyone on ZRL land.

Speaking on Monday afternoon when he went to the site where PF cadres are constructing and allocating plots to unsuspecting individuals, Kasolo who was accompanied by officers from ZRL and police in riot gear said it was very clear that the encroachers had been directed to the area.

“It is very clear that somebody must have pointed them (encroachers) to this piece of land here. The habits of people breaking the law and then expecting formalisation for their illegal acts are stopped. Nobody will do that when I am here and get away with it. They will not get away with it,” he said.

Kasolo warned that he would take appropriate action against any councillor involved in the illegal allocation of plots on the ZRL land.

“…if they are proved that there are councillors involved, I will take appropriate action against that councillor. It’s about time councillors were proud of their government and their party. You know this shows bad light against the PF because you know everybody is writing saying ‘the PF cadres have taken over the land’ and so on and so forth. So that’s why I came here first thing and I got the police to do their job and put a stop to this. I will not allow illegality to be legalised here,” he said.

Kasolo also dismissed an assertion by one of the encroachers who was found building on the land in question that they were given a go-ahead by provincial minister Makebi Zulu.

“They (encroachers) lie and lie a lot. As you can tell they are trying to implicate my provincial minister. It’s a total lie. My minister is a lawyer and he knows more than I do that any illegal act cannot be formalised as legal – it is always illegal,” he said.

Earlier, Kasolo engaged another encroacher, Paul Zulu, who complained that he was one of the people whose houses were destroyed in January last year and was told by the council to look for alternative land.

Zulu said on January 17, 2018 many houses including his were destroyed by the government adding that he had been victimised.

Kasolo said Zulu’s house was destroyed together with many others because they had built on top of a high pressured water pipe.

He urged Zulu to move away or else police would arrest him for criminal trespass.

“You break the law you pay for it! There are many people who paid for breaking the law and me I have come to warn you before you put any more money here that you stop,” he said.

But Zulu claimed that Makebi Zulu and Chipata mayor Mwale were aware of the encroachers issue.

Kasolo said it was unfortunate that the encroachers were issuing threats to the manager at ZRL in the area.

Zulu promised to meet Kasolo at his office so that they could look at the possibility of resettling the people whose houses were destroyed.

But Mwale said the council had not allocated land to anyone in ZRL area.

“We never allocated land to anyone (on ZRL land) so if they are people who are claiming that we allocated them; I am getting it for the first

time. All what I am aware of is that concerned citizens came to complain that people are encroaching on the railways land. But if they

say we are aware as a council about what is prevailing on the ground, that’s not true and I can also urged them not to point fingers at everybody when they are doing wrong things,” he said.

Mwale said he was careful on issues to do with land adding that he does not tolerate nonsense.