It appears the tide is turning at Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) as it emerges that the Retrenchment Board ordered reinstatement of fired employees and a riot act was read to the Acting Chief Executive Officer Rita Likukuma for incompetency, Zim Morning Post has learnt.
This publication understands that the human resources and skills audit that was conducted at Likukuma’s instigation will be redone as it is littered with flaws.
These developments came soon after the arrest of Tourism Minister Prisca Mupfumira whom ZTA employees accused of nepotism and cherry picking her associates including Likukuma and imposing them into top positions .
A message sent to fired employees on Tuesday advising them of their reinstatement insinuated that Likukuma had acted against due process as the human resources department acknowledged irregularities that marred the whole process . “This has been necessitated by the need to correct procedural issues as raised by the retrenchment board” reads part of the statement.
Likukuma is on record for stating that she does not care about being popular among employees as long as she delivers her mandate.
She had been pinned by employees to have a salary review.
“It is a responsibility of the board to address issues to do with salaries, at any board committee you have the Human resources committee which addresses issues like that in consultation with finance and audit committee which would be looking at the funds that are available.
“Normally what we say is that each business must justify its cost, and if the authority can justify an increment in salaries it is a no brainer, you really just need to justify that for the revenue that you are generating you ascertain that you are able to pay this much,” she told Zim Morning Post a fortnight ago.
“What we cannot do in terms of corporate governance is to actually destroy organisations, at the end the end of the day our responsibility as the board is to make sure that the organisation continues to thrive and in thriving we look at the thriving of every stakeholder in that business including the shareholders creditors, staff, government which collects taxes.
“So there must be a fair distribution of the cake and when you choose to be fair at times you may not always please everyone, if one wants a bigger share of what they are supposed to get it may not be possible. As a board that is our responsibilities and we can live with being popular and being unpopular- but if I am not popular for reasons I can justify, eventually I will become very popular in the long run,” she added.
Insiders at ZTA said people who were not close to the incarcerated Mupfumira were the target of the retrenchment process which took place.
“Those who were not linked to the Minister or to Likukuma were the target of that process, no procedures were not followed,” said an insider.
The employees were sacked early this month as ZTA claimed it wanted to streamline its operations in line with the skills audit.