THE Harare City Council (HCC) is yet to utilise equipment
it bought with part of a US$144 million China Exim Bank loan it was granted in
2015 to improve water reticulation systems and infrastructure in the capital,
the Daily News reports.
According to the council’s recent audit committee minutes,
the machines are lying idle since they were purchased.
The machines were
supposed to be used for information communication technology (ICT) work on the
rehabilitation of Morton Jaffray water treatment works.
“The audit manager made findings such as lack of
implementation of disaster recovery plan and business continuity plan on ICT
systems and equipment, non-implementation of some council resolutions,
inadequate data centre security…HCC had no valid Microsoft licence…Chinese loan
printers and photocopiers were lying idle and a delay in implementation of the
document management system,” read part of the minutes.
Town clerk Hosiah Chisango said the whole ICT department
needed an overhaul to fix the issues raised in the audit.
He said chief among
them was to ensure that the safety system of the data centre is stored at a
different location and the storage facility of the CCTV is securely backed-up.
“With regard to the Chinese equipment that is lying idle,
we will have to urgently procure and replace all the printer consumables for
the heavy duty printers and photocopiers we got with the Chinese loan,”
Chisango said.
HCC received the $144 million China Exim Bank loan for the
refurbishment of Morton Jaffray water treatment works and other facilities
whose rehabilitation was supposed to have been completed in 2017.
The $144 million loan has been a bone of contention with
resident associations after an audit in 2014 revealed that part of the money
was used to purchase top-of-the-range vehicles under the guise of “project
cars”.
Ignatius Chombo, then minister of Local Government,
defended the purchase of the cars, stating that the directors were within their
right to buy them. Daily News
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