Council audit exposes clamping irregularities
Municipal Reporter
HARARE City Council says 25 percent of vehicles clamped in the Central Business District for violating municipal by-laws are released without paying fines by corrupt employees. An audit by council revealed that measures to control or detect corruption were not being implemented. Registers for clamped vehicles are also not being maintained at the Harare Central Stores. This was confirmed by the audit manager Mr Joseph Issa during a meeting of the audit committee.
“The same parking marshal who does the clamping also unclamps vehicles or the sergeant, the team leader of the officers involved in clamping does the unclamping for City Parking and Traffic Enforcement, respectively there is no segregation of duty.
“December 2013 council resolution that parking marshals clamp and unclamp vehicles had resulted in an uneasy relationship between Traffic Enforcement and City Parking staff on roles each entity should play thereby impacting negatively on enforcement of traffic by-laws and collection of revenue for both entities,” read minutes of the audit committee.
Mr Issa said there was room to improve the effectiveness of enforcement of traffic by-laws and revenue collection by filling 47 vacant posts in the traffic department.
He said City Parking was paying US$62 500 quarterly while the city collected between US$285 000 and US$470 000 annually in the past three years.
Mr Issa recommended that the Traffic Enforcement clamps and issue tickets while City Parking unclamps the vehicles.
“It also resolved that management comes up with an ideal situation regarding role, clarity/segregation of duties between Traffic Enforcement and City Parking and report on the outcome.
“That a new statutory instrument be gazetted to enable City of Harare Traffic Enforcement Division to ticket and clamp vehicles in arrears for on street parking fees,” read the minutes.
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