FORMER President Robert Mugabe has been officially summoned before Parliament to give oral evidence on the missing $15 billion diamond revenue which he alluded to during a public meeting in 2016.
BY VENERANDA LANGA
Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy chairperson Temba Mliswa yesterday confirmed that the letter to summon Mugabe before the committee had been sent.
“The letter for President Mugabe to appear before the committee has been written by Parliament in order for him to appear before the committee on Wednesday,” he said.
The Parliament schedule of committee meetings for this week also informs that Mugabe will appear before the Mines Committee, although it said the meeting will be subject to confirmation.
They also said the venue will be Senate.
However, Mliswa told NewsDay in an interview that MPs in the Mines Committee were amenable to grilling Mugabe at his Blue Roof mansion in Borrowdale, giving consideration for his frailty as he is old, as well as in respect to that he is a former statesman.
Meanwhile, Mines minister Winston Chitando has told Parliament that boards of some parastatals under the Mines ministry would be dissolved and new ones announced next week.
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The Mines minister said some of the parastatals, whose boards would be changed, included the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC), the Zimbabwe Mining Development Company (ZMDC) and the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ).
“New boards of parastatals will be announced next week and all the necessary processes have been done. The ZCDC, ZMDC and MMCZ will have new boards and Hwange Colliery Company will have additional board members,” he said.
Chitando said he would appoint very experienced people to chair the mining boards.
“The chairperson of each board is required to have at least 10 years’ experience in the mining sector with one or two mining houses. It’s not that every board member will have a mining background, but we will also need other skills. But certainly, the chairpersons of each of the boards will have a strong mining background,” he said.
MPs had complained about the non-performance of some parastatal boards in the mining sector that were bringing in fake investors who just came into the country for speculative purposes.
