A recent report revealed that most state enterprises were not adhering to the Corporate Governance Framework, so cabinet has adopted the principles of a bill that will empower the Ministry of State Enterprises and Parastatals (SEPs) to govern operations properly.
The principles of the bill were adopted by the Cabinet about two weeks back. We are now polishing it so that we can come up with a bill, which would be then passed into act if approved in Parliament. This bill, once passed into an act will give the ministry the powers to enforce necessary measures leading in the adherence of State enterprises to the corporate governance framework, said State Enterprises and Parastatals Minister Gorden Moyo.
Currently we do not have jurisdiction to properly deal with unlawful State enterprises. With this bill we have the teeth to bite and the feet to walk, he said. Responding to questions on the anomalies that have been purging SEPs, Moyo said his ministry had forwarded the report that revealed the irregularities to higher offices that have the mandate to deal with the issue.
After receiving the report, we presented it to the council of ministers and to the Prime Ministers office so that they can deal
with the anomalies together with the line ministries, he said.
A confidential report that was presented to the visiting International Monetary Fund delegation last week, revealed that only 33 of the 50 SEPs had valid boards, seven boards whose terms had expired, seven had boards with indefinite tenure, while three did not provide information on the tenure of their boards.
The report also revealed serious salary disparities whereby the highest paid chairperson was $12 707 while the lowest paid received $430. There were 16 SEPs that did not have ministerial approval for allowances and 13 SEPs that had no ministerial approval for salaries.
Post published in: Economy