Councillors chew over US$11m in seven months

INCARCERATED Harare town clerk Engineer Hosiah Chisango, who is on remand over a street lights deal, has called for external regulation of Harare council operations after revealing that councillors squandered more than US$11 million on weekly workshops and seminars in the first seven months of this year.

Trust Freddy Suburban Correspondent

Chisango told the Commission of Inquiry into council’s affairs on Tuesday this week that he was overruled by councillors demanding the weekly workshops between January and June this year.

This was despite the fact that Harare city council is struggling to deliver basic services such as clean water, garbage collection and road maintenance.

Previous reports suggested the popularity of the workshops was because those attending were paid allowances.

The workshops were allegedly held weekly from January to July and some were running concurrently.

Chisango, who has pending cases in the courts involving a US$9,2 million street lights deal, is appearing before the Commission accompanied by police officers.

He testified that councillors were responsible for the unnecessary workshops, adding that the total expenditure could have been even higher if some of their proposals were not rejected.

“I think even some of my directors would confirm that there were serious concerns raised and there were other issues where we would have to prioritise and say that we needed to pay other expenses before proceeding with workshops,” Chisango said. “However, there was always pressure to prioritise issues related to workshops and seminars.”

It also emerged yesterday that through council resolutions, councillors had assumed all executive powers with those mainly from CCC being accused of causing unnecessary expenditure.

Despite initially turning down some workshops, Chisango said he would eventually give in to councillors’ pressure, as they possess considerable influence and could potentially use council resolutions to have him fired.

He also revealed that the expenditure was high, partly because the number of councillors had increased.

“Regularly our councillors would request to have seminars and workshops. The first thing immediately after the constitution of council following elections, we have induction workshops to bring them up to speed with council operations,” Chisango said.

“So, we used to have 46 councillors, but we currently have 59 councillors and these workshops, obviously they would consume money in terms of accommodation and other expenses.

“There are induction workshops and over and above those, the councillors would always request that when they make policy, if they formulate certain policies, they would always request to have a workshop and those are the costs that we incur.”

However, leading the evidence from witnesses before the Commission, Mr Thabani Mpofu pressed Chisango on why he was compelled to carry out illegal actions for fear of losing his position, rather than upholding ethical standards.

“We have received documents indicating that for the first seven months, your councillors used an amount of US$11 million on workshops and seminars.

“The document we have here depicts a situation where there was a workshop on a weekly basis without exception for the month of January to the month of July and sometimes there were two workshops running concurrently at the expense of taxpayers’ money,” said Mr Mpofu.

As a recommendation, Chisango told the Commission that the excessive looting of council resources by councillors required that council operations be regulated from outside.

He added that councillors had been interfering with the day-to-day management of the city including tender processes, which is not part of their mandate.

Council also failed to procure an enterprise resource planning system since 2019 leaving council books in disarray, added Chisango.

He said the council has been using a temporary Sage system since 2019.