TROUBLED national airline, Air Zimbabwe (AirZim), has
suspended its chief executive officer (CEO), Ripton Muzenda, pending dismissal
for allegedly opposing a board resolution to retrench over 200 workers, The
Financial Gazette has learnt.
President Robert Mugabe’s son-in-law Simba Chikore,
AirZim’s chief operating officer and Muzenda’s second in command, would be in
line to take executive control of the airline.
The move could mark a dramatic turn to Muzenda’s tumultuous
15 month tenure at the beleaguered airline, during which he is said to have
resigned twice due to frustration. The AirZim board turned down Muzenda’s
previous resignation bids.
Sources disclosed that Muzenda had been forced out after refusing
to assent to an AirZim board decision for a retrenchment plan that was meant to
reduce the troubled carrier’s high employment costs, which had reportedly
undermined turnaround efforts.
The AirZim board had pressed ahead with firing at least 300
staff, including some of its longest serving executives, as part of efforts to
bring about wholesale changes to the national airline’s corporate culture.
Chairperson, Chipo Dyanda told The Financial Gazette in
April that the airline, battling a sharp fall in passenger numbers, had
enlisted the services of consultants to conduct an investigation into the
company’s workplace culture, the results of which are yet to be made public.
AirZim is 100 percent owned by government and falls under
the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure Development.
Transport Minister, Joram Gumbo, who has developed a
penchant for cryptic responses on the situation at the airline, denied
knowledge of Muzenda’s suspension.
“I am hearing it for the first time from you. I do not know
anything about it,” Gumbo told The Financial Gazette.
But at least four authoritative AirZim and aviation
industry sources confirmed to this newspaper that the AirZim boss, who assumed
the hot seat in August last year, had been shown the door last week.
The Financial Gazette understands that the AirZim board is
scheduled to meet over the next few days to decide Muzenda’s fate.
“I am told he was resisting board directives to arbitrarily
retrench staff, which is crippling operations,” an executive at AirZim said this
week.
A previous retrenchment of another 300 workers was recently
overturned by the courts, and the airline was ordered to reinstate the workers.
“He was forced to go on leave. The AirZim board will be
meeting either on Friday or on Monday next week to endorse his dismissal,” the
source said.
“It is difficult to assess him given the operating
environment. He did not have a particularly good working relationship with the
board and had a tense relationship with his number two. He was also not the
minister’s favourite.
In my own assessment, he did not achieve much. It also did
not work that when he came, he had zero trust for the previous management,” the
source said.
The airline’s influential chief operating officer Chikore
is said to have played a key role in bringing Muzenda from Singapore last year.
People aware of developments at the airline said
immediately after the two started working together, relations deteriorated
because Chikore usurped his role.
With a divided executive and poor relations between the CEO
and the board, the airline had been careering down the abyss.
AirZim’s passenger numbers have plummeted to about 230 000
per annum in the past few years, from a peak of one million in 1996, as
travellers opt for other airlines on the four domestic destinations it services.
The 230 000 passengers pale into insignificance considering
developments in the airline industry in the region.
When Britain’s longest-surviving airline brand, Monarch
Airlines went into administration two weeks ago, it left 110 000 customers
stranded and 750 000 bookings in limbo in only one week.
Muzenda was the seventh CEO in 14 years since 2003, a
statistic described by one airline executive this week as “pretty much scary”.
The 2003 departure of Rambai Chingwena as CEO marked the
beginning of a frenzy of hirings and firings that included Innocent Mavhunga,
Oscar Madombwe, Peter Chikumba, Grace Pfumbidzayi and Edmund Makona, who
Muzenda replaced in August last year.
CEOs are not entirely to blame for the problems that have
rocked AirZim in 14 years; it is government that is letting the airline down.
Analysts said it would be a miracle if AirZim bounced back.
The company faced a new kind of crisis from the first
quarter of this year, when it was forced to exclusively depend on leased
aircraft, including jets from StarAir Cargo of South Africa, to service its
domestic and regional route networks, while former employees camped on its
gates, demanding retrenchment packages. Financial Gazette
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