The Commission of Inquiry into the governance of Harare City Council will be in place for another three months after President Mnangagwa extended its tenure to allow it to complete its work.
The Commission, which was set up on May 10 with an initial
mandate to probe HCC from 2017 within a time frame of six months, now has up to
early February next year to complete its work and report back to the President
by early May.
Chaired by retired High Court judge, Justice Maphios Cheda,
the Commission was constituted in a proclamation under the Commission of
Inquiry Act with its tenure set to expire this month, but with an option of a
three-month extension if that was found necessary.
In Proclamation 5 of 2024 gazetted in Statutory Instrument
180 of 2024 yesterday, President Mnangagwa exercised that option of an
extension, taking the investigation up to nine months.
The original instruction remains that the commission must
report to the President within three months of completing its investigation,
giving time to analyse the information, draw conclusions and draft
recommendations.
Apart from Rtd Justice Cheda, the other members of the
Commission are local government experts Steven Chakaipa, Norbert Phiri, Lucia
Gladys Matibenga and Khonzani Ncube.
In July, President Mnangagwa replaced Mr Phiri with Mr
Tafadzwa Charles Hungwe, a Harare lawyer.
The Permanent Secretary for Local Government and Public
Works is the secretary to the commission, meaning it can easily access the
necessary support from the Ministry.
Among its terms of reference the commission is to
investigate financial management systems and audit compliance with the Public
Finance Management Act and other laws.
In particular, the President wanted it to investigate
financial management of revenue generated through special vehicle companies and
other out sourced arrangements.
These would include entities like Rufaro Marketing, a
private company owned by the council that controls a large property portfolio,
and City Parking, another private council-owned company that controls the city
centre public street parking, parkades and council car parks.
Both should be producing substantial revenue for the
council, but as private companies, they do not have to issue public accounts.
In addition, the council itself has not been giving details
of their accounts and the public does not know how much revenue they make, what
their costs, such as their payrolls, are and what the eventual profits might
be.
Harare has come under severe criticism from the Auditor-General among others for not having an Enterprise Resource Planning system to manage its accounts since 2019, and the commission needs to investigate why not and to quantify any losses accruing as a result. Herald
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