Lovemore Chazingwa
Chinhoyi Town Council woes keep piling as a forensic investigation that unearthed fuel siphoning put a plug on critical infrastructure funding with roads revenue utility, ZINARA freezing annual allocations for the past two consecutive financial years.
Chinhoyi Central Constituency MP, Leslie Mhangwa took the Minister of Local Government and Public Works, represented by Deputy Minister Benjamin Kabikira, to task over the delay in addressing challenges which have resulted in the impasse between Zinara and the Municipality, resulting in the non-remittance of road rehabilitation funds for the period under review.
This follows an audit report of Zinara funds in 2023, for the two year period from 2021 to 2022, which highlighted variances in fuel disbursement to Chinhoyi Municipality. The municipality carried out an internal investigation which discovered that there were missing registers to account for fuel to the tune of 6 700 litres.
This resulted in the stores controller being suspended and the case is before the courts.
However, the Minister said his Ministry is in the process of setting up an investigation team to look into this issue.
According to Mhangwa, “Zinara has put a condition that since the alleged offender was arrested and the matter is under prosecution before the courts, in the interim, the local authority can get a clearance letter from the ministry so that the city is not held at ransom by the defect of an individual.”
In response, the Minister said that Local Government is going to wait for the team to be deployed to Chinhoyi Town Council and carry out their investigation. It will then act on the basis of recommendations from the investigation.
Mhangwa further submitted, “Considering that this has taken two successive years, there is decay that will be happening on the roads and that there is no roll over of the Zinara budget. Can there be timelines so that Chinhoyi does not continue to lose money as a result. The primary concern is on service delivery which suffers the most as processes are ongoing.”
Dep. Min. Kabikira emphasized that the process will be accorded urgency as the ministry is equally concerned about the matter.
