POLICE Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri has been
ordered to immediately release 22 trucks of maize belonging to the Grain
Marketing Board (GMB) which were impounded at Chirundu border post in July.
The order was issued by High Court judge Justice David
Mangota on Wednesday after the transporters, Holbud Limited J and J Transport,
approached the courts seeking to compel Chihuri to release the maize which was
now at the mercy of baboons and monkeys.
Holbud Limited general manager Roopak Bhadra said he was at
loss as to why the police were reluctant to release the trucks even though all
the documents pertaining to the importation of the maize by GMB from Zambia had
been made available to them.
In his order, Justice Mangota said: “The unconditional
release of the impounded 22 30-tonne trucks with maize be and is hereby
confirmed. The respondents (Chihuri and Senior Assistant Commissioner Mrs
Mushaurwa, Mashonaland West) be and are hereby ordered to pay demurrage charges
in the sum of $90 300 as at August 9, 2017 of the impounded trucks and maize.”
The court also ordered Chihuri and Mushaurwa to pay legal
costs on an attorney and client scale, one paying the other to be absolved. In
his founding affidavit, Bhadra said his company entered into an agreement with
GMB and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) for the importation of maize.
Bhadra was surprised on July 26, when he received
information that police had impounded the maize together with the trucks.
“I later received a report to the effect that the maize was
being impounded because of a statement made by the Minister of Agriculture,
Joseph Made. On that same afternoon, I was given telephone numbers of the
second respondent (Mushaurwa), who advised me that they had received a radio
from the Police General Headquarters to the effect that the maize should be
impounded,” Bhadra said.
“She advised me that she was trying to identify the author
of the radio and that in the interim period, she wanted all the documentation
relating to the importation of the maize. The following day all the relevant
documents were provided to the second respondent.”
Bhadra said on July 28 he made a further follow-up and was
assured that the maize would be released the following day, but that never
happened. Newsday
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