The Parliament’s Public Accounts sub-committee on local authorities has ordered Harare City Council (HCC) to submit financial statements of its companies, as investigations continue over the US$190 million that could not be accounted for.
HCC lost track of the money after it cancelled a contract it had with a South African company, Quill Associates, that supplied it with accounting software.
Acting town clerk, Mr Mabhena Moyo and council IT manager Mr Samson Madzokere appeared before the sub-committee chaired by Chegutu West legislator Dexter Nduna last Friday where they were issued the directive.
The council companies include Harare Quarry, Rufaro Marketing and EasyPark, among others.
HCC had a contract with Quill Associates that ran from 2006 before it was terminated in 2018 over a US$40 000 dispute. Since then, the council has been keeping its records using software that is incompatible with the huge transactions it handles.
Auditor-General Mrs Mildred Chiri in her 2020 audit report said she was concerned that no one could tell her how the money had been spent and feared prepayments for goods or services that were never delivered or overpayments may have been made.
She recommended that HCC and Quill Associates resolve their differences to enable the local authority to access to the required software.
Now, Parliament wants to see the software they have been directed to produce between themselves and Quill in order to recover the US$190 million and enable them to reconstruct the documentation so that the Auditor General can verify where the money is. The Herald cites Nduna as saying:
The second thing is to provide us with financials of entities that fall under HCC like the quarry, Rufaro Marketing, Roadport and EasyPark, so that we can verify the extent of financial haemorrhage.
He said Rufaro Marketing had refused to submit their financials for auditing even to HCC, and Parliament wanted to verify if there was any prejudice against the council.
Nduna said the sub-committee also wanted HCC to report to the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) any of its officials found to have abused funds.