TWO Zesa employees were last Friday slapped with a three-year jail term each for stealing various equipment from the power utility’s garage in Belmont, Bulawayo.
REPORT BY SILAS NKALA STAFF REPORTER
The two — Shepard Sakala (34) and Mkhokheli Ndlovu (48) employed by Zesa’s subsidiary, the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) — were found guilty of the offence despite their denial.
Bulawayo magistrate Rose Dube heard that the stolen property included a pumping element, compressor and a DAF lorry gearbox. The value of the property was not given in court papers.
The court suspended two years of the sentence on condition of good behaviour.
Public prosecutor Jeremiah Mutsindikwa told the court that on May 1 last year, Sakala and Ndlovu, who were on standby duty, drove to the ZETDC garage where they lied to the security guards that they had been assigned to collect the equipment.
They also lied that the garage foreman Lazarus Chigede had authorised them to collect the said property.
The two then loaded the equipment into the company vehicle they were driving and took the gearbox to Sihube Bus Service Company where they had secured a ready market.
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The bus firm owner, Colleen Mandla Mpofu, asked them to leave the gearbox so he could test it first.
The pair took the pumping element to a house in Southwold for pressure testing by a compressor technician identified as Lovemore Mutoko.
However, the Zesa security later blew the whistle to their superiors who in turn reported the matter to the police, leading to the pair’s arrest.
The stolen goods were subsequently recovered.
