HARARE City Council employees have rapped management, particularly finance director Justin Mandizha, for failing to turn around the fortunes of the city and refusing to accept advice on how to improve revenue collection.
BY STAFF REPORTER
The workers claimed Mandizha, who assumed the post in August last year, had failed to tame the city’s ballooning debt now estimated at $424 million. They also accused mayor Bernard Manyenyeni of defending Mandizha, adding the latter had ignored advice on plugging leakages and improving revenue collection.
“We made it clear as workers that the situation was getting worse. The finance director and management are not doing well enough to collect revenue and to maximise on our businesses, hence the sorry situation we are in,” said a workers’ committee official.
“If he has failed, he should admit and leave it to someone who can work and turn around the fortunes of the city.”
Harare Municipal Workers’ Union executive chairperson Cosmas Bungu last week wrote to Manyenyeni raising workers’ concerns over the handling of council funds.
Part of the letter read: “We have impressed upon the City of Harare management to be financially innovative in terms of debt recovery and also requested them to include the employee representative in the strategy in order to curb serious leakages through alleged collusion by certain officials and managers, to no avail.”
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The workers said management was on record saying it had a fat debtors’ book, but argued it was not being managed properly through “alleged management dexterity, corruption and lack of co-ordination by the respective parties”.
Council is owed $424 million by residents, government and business, while it is also failing to pay salaries for its workforce.
Manyenyeni said he was yet to see the letter from workers and could neither confirm nor deny reports that he was protecting Mandizha.
“I haven’t seen the petition as yet, but the finance director does not report to me directly. He reports to the acting town clerk (Josephine Ncube),” Manyenyeni said.
Mandizha was not immediately available for comment yesterday.
