Victoria Ruzvidzo  Business focus
The story on corruption is getting increasingly nauseating, with more cases being unravelled day in-day out literally.  What is the world coming to? You see people in decent suits, looking sober, executive and innocent and yet behind the aesthetic look is a trail of misdemeanours that are afflicting the economy and compromising service delivery in one way or the other.

Certainly, were it not for corruption, Zimbabwe would be ranking quite highly on any global index on development.
Only yesterday, this paper carried a story of a US$100 million scam at the City of Harare where officials were in the habit of inflating prices on a loan obtained from China.

Such myopia and blinkered vision has compromised service delivery.
The roads are difficult to navigate due to potholes, many traffic lights are not working while rubbish is strewn all over the city, among the many challenges that confront the once Sunshine City of Harare.

To think that the US$144,4 million loan was meant to refurbish the city’s water system at a time when many have gone without such a critical resource for years, and yet those tasked with sorting such issues only see the facility as an option to make money for themselves!

My word!
Who then should be put in charge of such projects?

A similar story is brewing at Marange Diamonds where Government is said to have been prejudiced of millions of dollars as management inflated prices as well.

I commend Mines and Mining Development Minister Walter Chidhakwa for instituting a probe into it.
This is a sad day for our country!

I will not delve much into these issues as today I gave space to feedback. The letters, emails and even phone calls I have been receiving on the issue indicate that people are exasperated by the goings on.

Herewith some of the emails I received over the past week.

Industrialist and economic commentator Anthony Mandiwanza had this to say:
Dear Victoria
I hope I find you well and wishing you compliments of the new season (belated though)
I wish to commend you for a candid article regarding the above. I am relieved and inspired that The Herald has taken its rightful role to inform and educate the public objectively without fear or favour. I only wish this development had commenced much earlier, who knows the rot could have been mitigated.

The brazen plunder and pilferage of public resources can never be allowed to subsist in a civilised country like ours.
My worry is that sooner rather later all these vices will be history consigned to the dustbin while the corrupt parade their ill-gotten wealth with impunity.

What are the lessons to our children and generations to come?
Need we ask what is going to happen with further stories we hear of people being bought houses every year at PSMAS and given them as a gratuity, board members receiving outrageous retainers and sitting allowances as well as other perquisites that defy logic? What is still to be unearthed at NSSA (another time bomb waiting to explode)? The imponderables are just too many but I think Reason Wafawarova in a complementary article to yours also nails it.

“The public demands nothing short of a commission of enquiry to bring all offenders to book — period.”
Ministers who were responsible for these heinous acts of plunder should never be allowed to get away with it.

Something called responsibility has got consequences.
My heart bleeds and so is for many thousand relatives of members of PSMAS who were denied medical attention and may have died, however, my only respite is that the public media has woken up and is doing its work diligently and will not rest until culprits are brought to book in spite of the real physical danger posed to silence the voice of the majority.

By the way, when one gets US$230 000 net into his account simple computation tells you that at a marginal tax rate of 45 percent, the gross income is around US$400 000 and that’s the cost to the company (medical aid fund)!!!!.

I commend you for your courage and pray that you remain strong for the good of our country.
May God bless you.

* * *

Another reader wrote:
How are you my sister?
Firstly, I would like to unreservedly express my appreciation for your coverage of topical issues which renders your weekly column a must-read, you really feel the pulse of the goings on in the society.

But the real reason why I write to you is to express my opinion on the apparent and endemic levels of corruption eloquently touched on in last week’s instalment.

Granted, corruption is cancerous but for how long have we tolerated it?
How is it that we have top executives earning stratospheric amounts not congruent with the performance of the company?

I would imagine that CEO’s are monitored by their boards, but when we have such incidences one wonders the role they play?
Who is supposed to control who, the CEO or the board?

The motion of performance-based contracts is almost a rule-of-thumb for modern progressive and prudent entities the world over. Why do we dismally fail to stick to such practices.

Wherever one goes these days, be it in a pub, street, church or even homes, the corruption at a PSMAS, ZBC, Air Zimbabwe is being discussed.

Even street vendors are talking about it, not that I am patronising but the entry-point is to portray the magnitude of this scenario.
And yet the painful reality is that this might probably just be a tip of the iceberg.

In an economy confronted by a series of challenges as ours clearly is, we cannot afford this debilitating luxury.
Parastatals grossly under-perform, investment is dreadfully low, unemployment is untenable and our infrastructure needs urgent remedy yet paradoxically we have this scenario of obscene accumulation of wealth.

It should thus be obvious to any discerning eye that the root cause of our problems, notwithstanding any external factors, is corruption.
It is predictably inevitable that public figures face public scrutiny worse still for those who handle public funds.

Your reportage of these goings on is world class and should be commended no-end.
I was reading a recent report that Africa’s growth could be significantly higher were it not for corruption.

We have a whole President in R G Mugabe who has spoken about this.
Why are his immediate subordinates not acting on it?

I fully appreciate the extent of the President’s duties but surely any team is only as good as they work together towards the attainment of their goals.

Corruption is immoral to all our developmental and growth goals.
The media, I have lately noticed The Herald is shedding light on this tragic but prevalent phenomenon.

I should urge the need for investigations to go deeper and even the reportage to be more extensive.
We can only ignore this at our own peril.

God Bless you.

Fredrick Makore
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In God I Trust

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