Mrs Chiri has ordered all Government departments to furnish her with details and
she is keen to ensure watertight safeguards are in place. The audit will
establish how records of Covid-19 donations are managed.
Local companies, individuals, friendly countries and
development partners flocked to help Zimbabwe in its fight against Covid-19 and
they were promised that everything would be accounted for.
In an interview, Mrs Chiri said she was now waiting for
responses from the relevant departments including the Ministries of Local
Government and Public Works; Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare and
Health and Child Care.
“We are waiting for the responses of these ministries on
the issues we raised. Once we get the information we will study them, where we
will look at issues of corporate governance, the control mechanism, and what is
it that needs to be done,” said Mrs Chiri.
“Our desire is not to conduct a witch-hunt, but to assist
Government so that it does not unnecessarily lose resources. We will write to
them on our observations, where we feel requires improvement.
“We will be looking at such issues as control systems,
whether they are strong or weak, at how are records of Covid-19 donations
administered, at the distribution of such donations. So it is a whole package.
It is a systems audit to ensure that there is enough control mechanism in
handling the donations. The idea being to improve and ensure value for money
given that we are still in a pandemic and every donation counts regardless of
how huge or small.”
Mrs Chiri said her previous work on State entities had been
post-expenditure audits and she wanted to ensure that systems are watertight.
She said the audit was delayed due to the national
lockdown. “There is a Government circular directing that departments can
increase their staff complement from 15 percent to 40 percent. That is what we
are now doing and we are sure the situation will improve. This will also go a
long way in dealing with not only audit of Covid-19 donations, but other audits
with respect to other entities,” said Mrs Chiri.
Zimbabwe has been ranked number 102 by the World Health
Organisation in fighting the pandemic.
The rankings were crafted in such a manner that countries
in the single digit category did not do well in fighting the pandemic, while
those with double digits did better and those with three digits did well. Herald
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