The tiff between the Zimbabwe Republic Police and Zimra over money collected as fines shows the fight among State institutions over public money. NewsDay Editorial
Zimra Commissioner-General Gershem Pasi on Monday told Parliament that the police and the Zimbabwe National Roads Authority (Zinara) were supposed to hand over all the money they collected to Treasury, adding that the current arrangement where the two institutions kept the money was “susceptible to abuse”.
This prompted an angry and unprofessional response from police spokesperson Charity Charamba on Thursday who labelled Pasi a liar and a failure.
All along we thought that the likes of Charamba, being seniors in law-enforcement, were aware of Section 302 of the country’s Constitution that requires all revenue collected to be deposited into the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CDF).
This violation of the Constitution has seen a number of public institutions keep part of or all revenue collected.
What is irksome is that these public funds have been openly abused through fat cats’ huge salaries and other corrupt activities.
Zimbabwe is a planned economy and this entails that all revenue collected be pooled into one purse for disbursement by government.
But our public institutions such as the Zimbabwe Republic Police, Zinara and the Registrar General’s Office among others, have taken advantage of the weaknesses of the central government to keep revenue collected not for public good, but for the enrichment of a few individuals.
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Public funds are abused left, right and centre and nothing is done about it. We understand that the police were allowed to keep the money during the hyperinflation period by Treasury, but two things make us raise eyebrows.
First, Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa bemoans lack of fiscal space yet he is the custodian of CDF and he can lawfully cause the revocation of the agreement to let the cops and other institutions keep revenue collected. Why is he not doing so?
Second, all along tollgate fees were collected by Zimra, but without warning, the task was handed over to Zinara. Who authorised that because we understand that only Treasury can do so? Are these double standards?
It is a public secret that our public institutions have thrown good corporate governance through the window and to trust them with money is like trusting a bank robber with a bank’s vault.
Our public institutions are now in the habit of coming up with little schemes to fleece the public of huge amounts of money. It has become some sort of evil business competition among them. And they have the backing of a weak central government that does nothing about it.
Public service delivery has gone to the dogs and right now we are facing an imploding economy and another cholera outbreak as a result. Chinamasa should force all public institutions to uphold the Constitution and remit all revenue to Treasury.
