Harare East Member of Parliament who is the Chairperson of the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, Tendai Biti, has tightened screws on Zimbabwe National Roads Authorities (Zinara) over the internal audit report which exposed the rot at the road administrator.
Zim Morning post is in position of the internal audit report which the ZINARA bosses said they have never set their eyes on before appearing before the portfolio committee.
The audit exposed how ZINARA abused funds amounting to million dollars and how tenders were awarded without following due processes as required by the law.
The audit also reveals that most of the contracts failed to comply with the Road Act, while tender procedures were flouted during the awarding of contracts under a special projects programme.
“No tendering procedures were done in awarding most of the contracts and the contracting process was led by Zinara and letters would be sent to the road authority with an instruction on specific contractors to consider for the execution of special projects,” the summary finding of the audit read.
“Formal tendering procedures were not followed in respect of contracts worth more than USD$1million resulting in contravention of the requirements of the State Procurement Board.”
The audit also revealed that “some contracts on major projects do not specify the names of the roads to be rehabilitated and that the contracts did not comply with the Zimbabwe General Conditions of Contracts, as they did not specify, among others, performance security and time line.”
Biti also summoned Precious Murove who is said to have resigned from the parastatal last week. However, Biti said Murove’s resignation should not stop him from appearing before his committee because “it will be contempt of parliament.”
“As you know he (Murove) is key and he was key to the transactions that are disclosed and viewed in the audit, in regards to special projects in particular, Mr Murove wrote most of these letters that went to contractors that carried out special projects against the provisions of the procurement Act which requires that all tenders, all supplies have to be subjected to competitive tender,” said Biti.
Documents show that Zinara paid US$71 million and R31 million between 2011 and 2016 to 17 contractors for special projects, although the companies were handpicked without either going to tender or conducting due diligence.
The companies that were contracted include Badon, which was paid US$8 million as well as R13 500 000 (US$189 000), Bitumen World (US$10 649 369), Drawcard (US$1 772 010), Earthset (US$3 347 068), Forit (US$7 677 844), Haingate (US$10 760 490) and Fremus (US$8 761 592).
Other companies which also benefitted include Fossil, Jepnik, Madz, Henan, Skindat, Tencraft, Transstar, Notify, Bermipools and Twalumba.
Zinara will be back in Parliament on Friday the 5th of April 2019.