eBusiness Weekly
Livingstone Marufu
An independent committee that will scrutinise findings of the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (Zinara) report, is expected to decide Government’s next course of action.This comes after an internal forensic audit on the operations of Zinara, exposed massive financial abuse, including payment of $71 million and R31 million to contractors cherry-picked without going to tender, among many other irregularities.
Zinara also has $5,7 million locked up in Metropolitan Bank and the collapsed Allied Bank.
Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister, Dr Jorum Gumbo, told Business Weekly that an independent committee, which had been set up will determine the next course of action to be taken.
“The findings by the independent committee, will decide our next course of action . . . at the moment we can’t agree or disagree with the findings. But after their assessment we will know what to do.
“In order to bring closure to the forensic audit findings, I have now instituted a committee of experts to look into operations of companies, which dealt with Zinara in their operations. The experts have been drawn from various disciplines in the public and private sector.
“The committee members have been drawn from the following disciplines, legal economics, project risk management, accounts, engineering and finance and quantity survey.
“We don’t want to name members of the committee as naming will prejudice their work since some involved contractors will try to bribe these officials. We need transparency we will not name them,” said Minister Gumbo.
Body members are expected to complete investigations in the parastatal in the next two months.
The audit report recommended a need for enhanced efficiency to unlock value in the financial systems of Zinara.
Government is forging ahead with policies to ensure state owned utilities operate on a profitability basis for the benefit of the economy.
The forensic audit was done by an international audit firm Grant Thornton at the instruction of the Auditor General.
The report unearthed that Plumtree — Bulawayo-Harare-Mutare project with a contractual sum of $206 million financed by Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) was a prejudice since such amount was not paid to the Government of Zimbabwe.
This project has also other contracts which are unknown to the Government at the time the Agreement was signed.
The companies that were contracted include Badon, which was paid $8 million as well as R13 500 000 ($189 000), Bitumen World ($10 649 369), Drawcard ($1 772 010), Earthset ($3 347 068), Forit ($7 677 844), Haingate ($10 760 490) and Fremus ($8 761 592).
Other companies which also benefitted include Fossil, Jepnik, Madz, Henan, Skindat, Tencraft, Transstar, Notify, Bermipools and Twalumba.
Zinara is believed to have a duplication of roles and overpayment of some executives.
The audit reveals that most of the contracts failed to comply with the Road Act, while tender procedures were flouted during the awarding of contracts under a special projects programme.
