This last Monday, March 18, a few Zanu (PF) functionaries called for a meeting with the Mutare City labour force. Comments emanating from this meeting and an earlier briefing session to journalists and selected stakeholders, cannot go unchallenged or without comment.
It is no secret that the bulk of the City labour force has not been paid for two to four months. Serious cash flow problems bedevil the Council, but one needs to know why, and how to provide possible solutions. Apparently at the briefing I was accused, in my position as suspended Mayor, of preventing the Council from raising funds from various banking institutions within the City to cover their wage deficit.
One must realise that the City Council is a business like any other. Expenditure in simple terms should balance revenue, and being a public entity all stakeholders i.e. ratepayers should be appraised of the balance sheet. Debts incurred by Council will eventually have to be met by these very same ratepayers.
Fraudulent budget
It is therefore incumbent on the Council and the Treasury Dept to provide accurate budgets and cash flow projections when seeking funds to bridge deficits. The 2012 budget presented to
Ministry in January of 2012 was fraudulent (see attached letter), and I believe that the 2013 budget has been complied and presented with the same anomalies i.e. understating employment costs and obligations.
Management has consistently relied on a ballooning debtors account from accumulated unpaid rates etc. to justify excess expenditure on their behalf. At the same time Council refuses to engage independent consultants to fully analyse the debtor’ account and so determine its origins and the true level of its recoverability. Their reluctance to implement independent audits of their yearly financials and business entities e.g. Pungwe Breweries, only engenders a growing lack of confidence in Council’s financial capabilities and its ability to repay its ever growing outstanding loans.
The reason given by Ministry for my suspension in January 2012 was ‘mismanagement’, yet the Ministry have been repeatedly apprised of these anomalies in our City budgets, yet refuse to take any corrective measures. A full financial year has passed since my suspension, and Council Management and Treasury have done nothing to seek professional help in rectifying their cash flow crisis. I ask you now, exactly where the ‘mismanagement’ originates?
Not helpful
It is not helpful for the Town Clerk, Obert Muzawazi, to continually blame me publically, as he did at this briefing, for allegedly blocking Council’s capacity to access funds. It is an ability that I just do not have, and perhaps both Councillors and Management need to look more closely at their own accounting practises. Banks and lending institutes are only prepared to take risks up to a certain level, and in so doing demand relevant cash flows etc. in return. Mutare City Council has to the best of my knowledge failed to provide these.
It appeared that at the meeting held with the City’s labour force, Messieurs Mutasa, Nyabadza and Mupfumi, either individually or collectively, indicated that they would try and source funds to cover City wage arrears from a diamond mining concern that has previously donated funds to various organisations around the City. They also alluded to the fact that everyone in the meeting hall had voted in an MDC council, and that was the reason behind the withholding of their wages. It must be pointed out here that Mupfumi is one of Minister Chombo’s appointed councillors and we were informed that his special interest was finance. He sits on the finance committee. He is well aware of the nature of the budgets mentioned above.
New union
It is inconceivable to me, and many others, that this group of people and their ilk can so liberally play with the livelihoods of some 1,700 workers who have family and rental commitments. I have been informed that a new labour union is now taking root at council, one aligned to Zanu (PF) and war veteran leader Joseph Chinotimba. I would strongly recommend this or any other union investigate the council budget process and apprise themselves of the revenue capabilities of the council before meddling in purely political grandstanding.
It is still my strongest recommendation that Council re-engage the consultants that the elected councillors resolved would assist with our 2012 budget and, furthermore, that Council re-open cordial and meaningful dialogue with the City’s rate payer associations, namely the MRRA and the CRRT, as after all it is ultimately their support that Council requires. Merely convening meetings with ‘selected’ stakeholders, whilst excluding the greater body of Mutare residents and ratepayers, is blatantly short sighted. – Cllr Brian James, Mayor, City of Mutare (under suspension).
Post published in: Letters to the Editor
Can we see the “attached letter”
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