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Farirai Machivenyika

Senior Reporter

THE Harare City Council has been ordered by Parliament’s Public Accounts sub-committee on local authorities to submit financial statements of its companies, as the sub-committee continues its probe into what happened to the US$190 million that could not be accounted for by Auditor-General Mrs Mildred Chiri in her 2020 audit report.

Council lost track of the money after it cancelled a contract it had with a South African company, Quill Associates, that supplied it with an accounting software and Mrs Chiri was concerned that no one could tell her what the large sum had been spent on and feared prepayments for goods or services that were never delivered or overpayments may have been made.

Acting town clerk, Mr Mabhena Moyo and council IT manager Mr Samson Madzokere appeared before the sub-committee chaired by Chegutu West legislator Cde Dexter Nduna last Friday where they were issued with the directive.

The council companies include Harare Quarry, Rufaro Marketing and EasyPark, among others.

Harare City had a contract with Quill Associates that ran from 2006 before it was terminated in 2018 over a US$40 000 dispute. Since then, council has been keeping its records using software that is incompatible with the huge transactions it handles.

In her report, Mrs Chiri had recommended that HCC and Quill Associates resolve their differences to enable the local authority to access to required software.

Now, said Cde Nduna, the sub-committee 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 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,” said Cde Nduna.

He said Rufaro Marketing had refused to submit their financials for auditing even to Harare City Council, its owners, and Parliament wanted to verify if there was any prejudice to council.

Cde Nduna said the sub-committee also wanted Harare City Council to report to the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission any of its officials found to have abused funds.

In her report, Mrs Chiri said shoddy accounting exposed the city to the prejudice.

“In terms of the International Public Sector Accounting Standard 1, Presentation of Financial Statements, the council should fairly present financial information and must faithfully represent its affairs,” said Mrs Chiri in the report.

“According to the council, trade and other payables to the tune of US$105 542 322 were unverifiable. In addition, trade and other payables totalling US$83 712 713 had debit balances and should have been reclassified.

“This suggests that the council might have prepaid or overpaid suppliers and has to recover the same.”