GWERU — Zimbabwe’s listing rules should be altered so that companies operating in the country are mandated to publish executives’ salaries and perks in their annual reports as is the global trend so stakeholders may know what they earn in relation to the firm’s performance, a leading accountant and sustainability expert has said.
TATENDA CHITAGU
Speaking at a one-day business reporters’ training sponsored by Delta Beverages in Gweru last Friday, Rodney Ndamba, the head of the Institute for Sustainability Africa (INSAF), said the compulsory salary disclosures were not on the listing rules and as such many executives got away with obscene perks at underperforming organisations because they were left unchecked.
“The global standard practice is that executives’ salaries and perks are published in annual reports. Stakeholders should know what they take home vis-à-vis how the company is performing,” Ndamba said.
Ndamba’s remarks came in the wake of shocking salary disclosures at the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, Premier Service Medical Aid Society and other loss-making parastatals where executives are bleeding the institutions while junior workers often go unpaid for several months and wallow in poverty.
He said even neighbouring South Africa had implemented the listing rules and argued that the rules here had to change to curb the current problem.
“We are lagging behind . . . other states have already implemented the listing rules where you find the salaries and benefits of the executives are published in annual reports.
Our neighbour South Africa, for instance, has implemented it,” Ndamba said.
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He also urged the authorities to make it mandatory that sustainability reports were included in annual reports.
“You find just a paragraph of sustainability reports where companies seem, on the surface, to care about the environment in which they are operating, yet deep down and beyond that paragraph, there is really nothing on the ground.
“Several companies also state corporate social responsibility, but some of the said activities will be too insignificant. Some just sweep less than 100 metres in the street and after that they go quiet yet journalists rarely question that,” Ndamba said.
He urged business journalists to be more inquisitive so that there is good corporate governance in the country.
