Biti denies state media allegations

The Sunday Mail last week said parliament had been pampering Moyo with a lavish 12-month stay in various executive suites costing about US$6 000 a month at the Meikles Hotel in Harare.

But in a statement on Monday, Moyos spokesperson Xolani Zitha said the Speakers office was dismayed at the grossly false allegations. Zitha said the Speaker only spent about six months at the hotel and the cost for the stay added up to about US$25 000.

Its a poorly researched and factually malicious article against Parliament and the Speaker which borders on defamation. The article is based on lazy journalism and for the record, the Speaker was never permanently booked at the Meikles, he said.

The total number of days he spent accommodated at the Meikles hotel by Parliament adds up to about six months. For the first month-and-a-half the bills were charged in Zimbabwean dollars during the period of hyperinflation. The US$ component of the bill started in mid November. The total bill paid by Parliament to Meikles is US$ 24, 126.40, which covers his intermittent stays between the 2nd of November 2008 and the 25th of August 2009, explained Zitha.

He said a full breakdown of the actual number of days that the Speaker was accommodated by the Meikles hotel was available as a public record from Parliament.

It is not a secret at all. The Speaker is entitled to a state residence as part of his conditions of service, and in the absence of houses for presiding officers, Parliament booked him in at the Meikles. Presiding Officers of Parliament are not the ones who set their own conditions of service nor is it the Speaker who authorizes payments to meet the costs of his upkeep, it is Treasury that does that, added Zitha.

He said the story peddled by The Sunday Mail was unprofessional and showed that there was still a long way to go before the public would be serviced by ethical journalists who wrote objectively and factually.

The Speaker is fully aware that public officials are open to scrutiny and that they must be accountable to taxpayers. He is equally aware that it is also in the publics interest to have journalists who do their research fully and properly so that the public are made aware of the truth and not half-truths, he said.