Parly intensifies HCC missing US$200m probe
STAFF WRITER
Parliament yesterday intensified its probe into Harare City Council’s operations over the US$200 million which is missing from the local authority’s coffers.
The lawmakers lambasted council officials for frustrating efforts to recover the money.
The Parliamentary Committee on Public Accounts toured council’s business arms including City Parking, Harare Quarry and Rufaro Marketing.
They were unhappy at council’s failure to account for money generated by companies.
Members of Parliament had to stop the tour of council’s Enterprise Resource System (ERP) because top council managers were not available to explain why the local authority did not have a functional billing system resulting in the loss of an estimated US$200m.
Chairperson of the committee Mr Charlton Hwende said council had an ERP system before the 9th Parliament whose committee recommended that the city engage BIQ on a short-term basis for purposes of accounting for the missing money.
“That is the recommendation that came from the 9th Parliament, we discussed when management came to Parliament, we were now following up on that for you to show us the progress that you are making as assisting the Auditor General (AG) to look for the US$200m.
“I was surprised there is no ERP here, this one you have is outside our mandate unfortunately. So why waste our time calling us here when you know that there is no work for us. These MPs are supposed to be doing something,” said Mr Hwende.
He said the mandate of the Public Accounts Committee is limited to the findings of the AG.
“In her last report of 2022, the Auditor General discovered that in the IT department people were bringing point of sale (machines) from home collecting money and as a result when she was auditing, US$200m had not been accounted for.
We don’t deal with current issues, we interfere with whom you give your ERP systems. But we are here for the purposes of the US$200m that requires the previous vendor to reconnect their system so that the AG can finish her report,” he said.
Mr Hwende had mixed feelings over the firms attacking Harare Quarry’s previous boards including one led by one Benson Gasura.
The legislator said the firm’s previous board members would hide critical information to Parliament and sometimes absconded from their sessions.
“So, we have to come here to see for ourselves and to our surprise we now know the reason why he didn’t turn up because he didn’t want to come and present the forensic report that we wanted.
“There is a huge scandal here that we would want to go back to Parliament and investigate. We have now asked them to provide us copies of the forensic report,” he said.
Mr Hwende also took a swipe at council management for failing to follow up with law enforcement agencies for missing US$4.5m in 2018.
As a committee we don’t tolerate abuse of funds, we don’t tolerate even officials that are in office now who don’t follow up on forensic reports, who don’t follow up to make sure that all the abused funds are accounted for.
“So those are the issues that we’ll be looking at. We will be summoning the people that were involved at that time. It’s not a long time ago as you are aware we are even currently doing 2020, 2021 issues, 2022 issues. So, we’ll be summoning them,” he said.
MP Hwende added: “We are also going to be summoning the current City of Harare officials because they have a duty, they know that the money went missing, no one is doing anything about it.”
“But to us that is a cause for concern because if you are saving your social life and you know that money has been stolen and you do nothing about it, that in itself is a more serious offence.”
Mr Hwende said they are going to be looking at those issues to ensure public funds are accounted for.
He said today they would be visiting Geo Pomona Waste Management which was also working with the City of Harare.
“We are also going to do a regular tour and that will conclude our tour and after that we are going to go finish the report but as you are aware we now have to entertain the issue of the forensic report so it’s going to take a bit more time before we finalise our report,” he said.
However, Mr Hwende said they were impressed by City Parking operations.
“We were at the City Parking in the morning and we saw heavy investment in technology and we are quite happy with their investment and how they are able to account for revenue.
“So, we are quite happy and the other issues we will then obviously deal with when we go back to Parliament because this is just a verification visit,” he said.
On Rufaro Marketing, Mr Hwende said while notable progress had been noted in resuscitating the firm, there was need for the current and past officials to be summoned to council so that lost property is recovered.