A ZANU PF Member of Parliament has arm-twisted the Cotton Company of Zimbabwe (Cottco) management to employ unqualified administration clerks in his constituency.
Makonde MP Kindness Paradza told a ZANU PF inter-district meeting held at Muvhami on Saturday that Cottco agreed to recruit clerks who failed to attain five Ordinary Level subjects.
Normally, Cottco recruits clerks with at least five O’ Level passes but Paradza, who is also the Deputy Information Minister, argued that learners in his area performed poorly last year due to the coronavirus and should therefore be considered even without the required number of subjects. Said Paradza:
We agreed that at all cotton depots in Makonde, they (Cottco) will take children from Makonde. They had put a prerequisite of 5 ‘O’ Levels and l said where do five ‘O’ Levels (holders) come from in Makonde?
In Makonde, there are one, two, three, and four ‘O’ Levels. There was corona (Covid-19) so the pass rate was not all that good.
Therefore, you the (Zanu PF) leadership, if you realise there is a clerk who is not a local community member that you know, inform me because l finalised with management at Cottco yesterday (Friday). There would be posts for clerks, loaders of cotton bales, and guards.
Cottco is a quasi-parastatal that buys cotton from farmers across the country. It currently owes farmers $1.5 billion from last year’s deliveries, which were done when the cotton producer price was set at $43.94 (US$1.75) per kg.