The Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) is
working with Criminal Investigations Department anti-corruption team to
investigate all its revenue streams as part of efforts to curb corruption while
addressing historical issues that had seen the rot set in at the entity.
Zinara board chairperson Engineer Michael Madanha yesterday
revealed the depth of corruption at Zinara and said a clean-up exercise was
underway.
The development comes after Zinara acting chief executive
officer Ms Mathlene Mujokoro and audit manager Mr Shadreck Matengabadza,
resigned while 19 employees have been arrested for fraud cases involving over
US$210 000.
“Our major concentration was of legacy issues. We have said
let us look at all those legacy issues and take appropriate action, and address
them and anyone who is found on the wrong side of the law should be taken to
respond to the law.
“We are going to approve all budget for road maintenance
and we are going to ensure that figures are published as required by the
Statutory Instrument,” he told Parliament yesterday.
He said when he took over at Zinara, there was no
handover-takeover and the company did not have a board or substantive chief
executive.
Engineer Madanha told Public Accounts Parliamentary
Portfolio Committee that when the board
had not gone through the auditor general’ reports for 2016 and 2017, but was
relying some of the internal audit reports.
“We have done a SWOT analysis as Zinara. We identified all
the weaknesses and all the threats at Zinara.
“The problems at Zinara are specific and straightforward
and one can pick them up if you know Zinara’s mandate and that is what we are
doing.
“The systems auditor wrote a number of reports to Zinara
executive to indicate leakages and now, that is our main source of evidence we
are using. Our major thrust was to first stop the leakages and to identify the
principal cause of corruption at Zinara which was the implementation of the
core function,” he said.
In a separate interview, Engineer Madanha said Zinara was
now sticking to its mandate of distributing road funds to road authorities, a
move which is one of the strategies put in place to curb corrupt activities.
Engineer Madanha said they had received the resignation
letters from Ms Mujokoro and Mr Matengabadza.
“These individuals will leave the organisation by the end
of June, by June 30 next month and as it stands there are no new developments,”
he said.
“Firstly, we have stopped implementing road works. We are
now disbursing funds to authorities and by doing this we will have eliminated
about 70 percent of problems that we had at Zinara,” he said.
He said this was because the authority was directly
contracting contractors which was in violation of the law and fuelling
corruption.
Eng Madanha said tenders were also not being done properly
as contractors were being contracted in an unclear manner.
“We also through SERA (State Enterprises Reform Agency)
which is in charge of analysing the works of parastatals, engaged a private
consultant to review the operations of Zinara and its mandate.
“They are coming up with a report which we will implement.
We are also going to update the Road Act because it needs revision,” he said.
Eng Madanha said they were also having problems of leakages
at most tollgates countrywide in which Zinara employees were pocketing money
from motorists through various ways.
One of them was that they would use a number plate of a
vehicle that is exempted to open the tollgates of several motorists before they
pocket the money.
“We have since come up with some control measures and we
have warned the employees that anyone caught will be punished severely as an
exemplary,” he said.
Eng Madanha said Zinara was going to improve the systems at
the tollgates and a local company, Univern Enterprises, was currently working
on that. Herald
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