Kwekwe City Council management has come under fire for allegedly doctoring council minutes to suit their agendas, while councillors have been censured for leaking confidential information to the Press.
BY BLESSED MHLANGA
During a highly-charged full council meeting held recently, councillor Aaron Gwalazimba accused the management team of doctoring full council sessions’ recordings and intentionally altering resolutions for reasons best known to them.
This is the third time this year that councillors have expressed unhappiness over the work of their committee officers, whom they accused of doctoring council records.
“If we are going to use a correct word, we have to say these minutes were doctored to meet an agenda which we don’t know. We agreed in this house that we are deferring this matter to a special council meeting, but all mention of special council was removed from the minutes,” Gwalazimba said.
On September 18 this year, council resolved to take the problematic prepaid water meter tender to a special council meeting, but it was never convened, much to the irritation of councillors. Town clerk Emmanuel Musara, however, defended his staff, arguing they were good at their job and would not have missed the mention of special council meeting if it had been alluded to.
In the same meeting, councillors also came under fire for allegedly leaking confidential information to the media, which Musara said was unethical.
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“The minutes of the committee are confidential and they only become a matter of public record once they are tabled in full council meeting. So I want to say it’s unethical to leak that information to the Press,” Musara said.
However, councillor Janet Ticharunga hit back, saying it was unfair for Musara to assume the documents were being delivered to the media by councillors when they could have found their way through management and other council employees.
As the hearing progressed, mayor Matenda Madzoke appealed to the councillors to keep the documents away from the media and also called on Musara to rein in on his employees as council struggled to muzzle the Press.
Kwekwe is worried over the leakage of information on the prepaid water meter tender and its plans to purchase a mayoral vehicle, information which was being kept under the lid. The information suggesting that council could have been defrauded of over $1 million between 2011 and 2012 was also leaked to the Press after audit reports were made available to NewsDay before they were presented to council.
