By MOFFAT CHAZINGWA –
THE Kitwe City Council (KCC) has unearthed a scam in which some unscrupulous individuals have been forging institutional documents such as letters of offer for sale of plots and receipts.
A man and woman have since been apprehended and handed over to the Police in connection with the scam.
Council public relations officer Donna Mbalwe named the suspects as Reward Phiri and Linda Mukwenda, who are all residents of Chamboli Township.
Ms Mbalwe said the two have allegedly been manipulating council property in form of letters of offer for plots and receipts including forging of the town clerk’s signature purporting that the documents were issued by the local authority.
She said in the scam, the man was responsible for forging the documents while the woman’s role was to source clients.
Ms Mbalwe said the two suspects were found in possession of items comprising a laptop, scanner, printer and original copies of letters of offer for sale and a receipt which they were using to forge council documents.
“We had initially received a tip from members of the public who suspected the two to be forging documents and this is how we started investigating the suspects until yesterday (Wednesday) when we cornered them,” Ms Mbalwe said.
She said among the forged documents that were found in possession of the two were offer letters for sale of plots in Chamboli.
Ms Mbalwe said the documents bearing a forged town clerk’s signature indicated that the offer letters were prepared in June this year.
To the contrary, residential plots in Chamboli were offered for sale to members of the public last year.
“This is just one of the many cases of illegal activities surrounding the sale of plots in Kitwe and we would like to warn all those involved that we will soon catch up with them,” Ms Mbalwe said.