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Tawanda Mangoma in Chiredzi
The newly-elected executive of the Commercial Sugarcane Farmers Association of Zimbabwe (CSFAZ) has agreed to work towards stopping collection of levies from members.The executive said it would rather adopt turnaround strategies, to bring a new lease of life to the institution’s loss-making business ventures. Addressing the association’s full council meeting last week, Captain Admore Hwarare (Rtd) said sugarcane farmers should take advantage of the scrapping of duty on agriculture inputs and work towards restoring their production capacity. He said the association could not continue operating at a loss, hence the need to adopt turnaround strategies.

“You all know the legacy of the sugar industry had been lost. The association was now being run like a backyard tuck-shop with loss presentation being every farmers’ expectation during Annual General Meetings of the outgoing executive,” said Captain Hwarare (Rtd).

“President Mnangagwa made it clear that we must hit the ground running in our respective areas and as the sugar industry, we must regain our lost status.” Capt Hwarare (Rtd) said in their quest for transparency and openness in the association, a team of internal auditors had already started checking their books. “The importance of an internal auditor has been unmasked by the team, which we assigned to look into our books”, he said. “Surprisingly, they unmasked a lot of anomalies which had become the norm in the day to day running of this institution. We don’t want farmers to continue paying levies. We don’t want our institution to continue operating at a loss.