Harare City Council executive payroll kept secret and not subject to audits
An audit of Harare City Council (HCC) shows that the executive payroll is not accountable to anyone. It is kept secret from the city fathers as well as the parent ministry, the Ministry of Local Government. Moreover, there are no internal checks on the payroll and it is not audited. The only person who was privy to all this information is the Head Capital Director (HCD) Cainos Chingombe.
Excerpts of the audit report read:
Audit noted that there were no internal checks and control systems as the HCD compiled the payroll for the executives, requested and received funds from the finance director and did the disbursements to the bank accounts of the 40 executive managers through the executive salaries bank account,” the ministry said in the audit report.
The HCC’s internal audit department was not privy to auditing the executive payroll and the executive salaries bank account hence there was no transparency in the way the executive managers’ salaries were administered.
The HCD and the chamber secretary were the only signatories of the executive salaries bank account also threatening the internal check and control systems,
The report also revealed that in the city’s 2015 and 2016 budgets, there was no mention of the salaries and allowances for the executive managers.
Audit noted that HCC’s actual total employment cost for the year 2015 was $129 646 244 whilst the approved budgeted total employment cost was $111 266 250 resulting in an unfavourable variance of $18 379 994,
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