…as councilors clash over probe
MUTARE– Residents associations have blasted council for engaging auditors as a smoke screen to decipher their own made mess amid revelations that councilors are divided on the exercise.
Programs coordinator David Mutambirwa of Mutare Residents and Ratepayers Association (MURRA) said mismanagement, policy inconsistence and rampant corruption created the mess which the municipality finds itself in.
Mutambirwa said council should show sincerity in dealing with the plight of unpaid workers, who have gone for fourteen months without pay, by recovering debt from its creditors.
“This mess that the city council finds itself in, is men-made due to mismanagement, policy inconsistence and rampant corruption at Civic Centre which has been going on for a long time.
“Management should be proactive in redeeming itself from this situation by recovering debt from some of its creditors to pay the workers,” he said.
Mutambirwa said management was failing to deliver their duties if they preside over an unpaid workforce as this was tantamount to compromising service delivery to residents and ratepayers.
He added that council priorities are misplaced if they do not consider the welfare of their workers, which are an important part of the service delivery cycle.
“Council has a lot of misplaced priorities because if a worker goes for fourteen months without getting paid how does that bode well with service delivery.
“Remuneration is the motivation for workers to work, so this failure to pay workers is as good as failure to deliver services to the people. Management has failed to deliver on its primary duties,” he said
On the audit exercise instigated to investigate why workers have not been paid, Mutambirwa said this was unlikely to yield any positive results.
He said management was fully aware why the municipality finds itself in this predicament, pointing fingers at the top brass who are getting salaries.
Spokesperson of Combined Mutare Residents and Ratepayers Trust, Rutherford Mangani also echoed the same sentiments when he questioned the necessity of an audit, where previous recommendations of other audits have not been heeded.
Mangani said management hide behind fingers when they claim they are not receiving salaries as they awards each other hefty allowances, as exposed in previous audits.
“Why are council engaging auditors when they have been previous audits whose recommendations they have not followed, what is going to be different this time?
“Previous audits have shown how top management has been paying each other hefty allowances while claiming that they are also not receiving their salaries,” he said.
Mangani said instead of wasting already strained resources to identify a problem whose source is known was fool hardy, council should focus on recovering debt from its creditors.
Meanwhile inside sources within council have revealed that a storm is brewing among councilors who are pointing fingers at each other for revealing too much to the probe team.
A councilor who requested anonymity sad some councilors are throwing counter accusations, to those who declined to be briefed by the mayor before presenting their cases.
The legislator sensetionally claimed that the Mayor, councilor Tatenda Nhamarare had ordered all councilors to see him prior to presentation before the audit team as he however stated that they had told the probe team all that was going on at Civic Centre.
“We have told the probe team the root cause of the problems at city council but now we are being victimised by others because we were not briefed by the Mayor on what to tell the auditors.
“That’s why you guys should write about these things so that the audit cannot be swept under the carpet.
“They are now accusing some of us for talking too much,” said the source, adding, “However the irony of the issue is that some councilors are now proxies of the top management and its better if we were fired because we have failed in our mandate to bring sanity at Civic Centre.”
Mayor Nhemarare confirmed that an audit was conducted with council now waiting for results.
“The audit was conducted and we are now waiting for the results and we will upraise you once they’re available for public consumption,” said Nhemarare.
Efforts to get a comment from the Town Clerk at the time of going to press were fruitless as he was unreachable. He also dis not respond to text messages sent to him.
