Winning city in fight over audit reports

By The NewsDay | May. 7, 2013 | 2 Min read

KWEKWE — CONTROVERSY has returned to haunt the local authority after audit committee councillors accused management of trying to cripple its operations by not producing an internal audit report for its consideration.

Report by Blessed Mhlanga

Speaking during a full council meeting on Thursday, Councillor Weston Masiya said the audit committee had not sat for two consecutive months because town clerk Emmanuel Musara had not furnished them with the report.

“We have not been sitting for two months because we have not been invited to sit as a committee and no report from audit has been presented before us. I am therefore not sure if our committee is still working,” he said.

Chairperson of the committee Aaron Gwalazimba said attempts to have the audit committee sit and look into financial controls at council had yielded no results.

“They deliberately want to kill our committee. We have been very critical and instrumental in raising the red flag on corruption so someone wants to shut us out,” Gwalazimba said.

The internal audit committee is led by Morris Mutema, who was acting town treasurer for the past two years until his replacement by Rejoice Maweni two months ago.

Council management denied the allegations that they were sabotaging the audit committee, saying instead, internal auditors were engaged in other businesses aimed at strengthening central administration at Town House.

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“Nobody wants to sabotage audit committee operations, but we have asked our internal auditors to work on improving systems in my department. If anything, the town clerk is one person who wants to have a stronger audit team,” Chamber Secretary Lucia Mkandla said.

Kwekwe, which was last month crowned the best run city council in the country by Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo, has been dogged by serious allegations of corruption and fraud in the past two years.