Harare Magistrate Court has granted ZWL$100 000 bail to former National Railways of Zimbabwe of Zimbabwe (NRZ) top engineer Phillip Chifamba who is facing corruption charges.
The court also ordered Chifamba to surrender his passport, reside at the given address and not interfere with state witnesses among other bail conditions.
According to state papers, Chifamba together with two other NRZ workers namely Joel Lunga and Azizi Mwale connived to show favour to Nyamtec Private Limited to carry out construction renovations at one of the company properties in Bulawayo.
This follows an internal audit report released last year indicating that Phillip Chifamba, who was chief engineer for infrastructure at the parastatal, grossly inflated costs for the renovation of an NRZ guest house in Bulawayo.
The work carried out by Nyamtec Private Limited was supposed to cost US$110,000 but Chifamba and his accomplices caused the price to be increased to $214 000, prejudicing NRZ of US$104,000 which was in direct contravention of the company’s Procedural order as read with the Procurement Regulations..
The audit report also indicated that Chifamba connived with former NRZ chief finance officer Joel Lunga, who approved the payments by-passing General Manager.
They also did not run the tender past the Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe as is required at law.
Payments were made directly through Lunga.
“Payments were done by the Finance Branch on instructions from the acting chief finance officer (Lunga). Papers wrongly processed for payment sailed through the hands of acting chief finance officer without scrutiny,” the audit report said.
It added: “All payments regarding variations were approved by the offices of the chief engineer and that of the then procurement manager and paid for by the finance branch. This was clearly contrary to expectations of the line of duty of the chief finance officer.”
