BY MIRIAM MANGWAYA CHEGUTU residents have appealed to President Emmerson Mnangagwa to intervene and stop massive corruption by top executives at the local authority.
They also asked the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc) to audit council books.
Zacc last month arrested council’s human resources manager George Kasamu and revenue accountant Blandina Kavhayi on charges of abuse of office, sexual harassment, nepotism and tax evasion. According to an email sent to Zacc, the residents want the municipality’s top executives, including acting town clerk Jacob Chikuruwo and other council directors suspended to pave way for investigations.
“Crimes which are being and have been committed are fraudulent activities which include allocating allowances from council bank accounts straight into accounts of respective thugs’ bank accounts, tax evasion, running parallel allocation of stands,” the letter read in part.
“…employment of unqualified personnel into key positions with the intention to strengthen their fraudulent strategies as they establish their network, inflated procurement, incurring personal expenses which are paid by council in the pretext of council business, instructing corrupt practices to subordinates and sharing proceeds among thugs and their allies who are front runners on the loot.”
But the acting town clerk dismissed the allegations as malicious.
“Those allegations were founded by people who are ignorant of how the auditing process works,” Chikuruwo said.
“We are actually up to date with our audit which did not find any wrongdoing. Another audit from the Auditor-General’s Office is currently underway and that will tell whether those allegations are true or not.”
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Zacc spokesperson John Makamure said the commission had received reports of corruption at the local authority.
“We are receiving several reports and recently we arrested two officers from the council who have since appeared in court. More reports are coming and the commission will continue to carry out the investigations,” Makamure said.
- Follow Miriam on Twitter@FloMangwaya
