Zinara rot: Questions raised over disbursements

Questions have been raised over the scandal-ridden-Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (Zinara)’s disbursements of funds to the road authorities between 2011 and 2016.

Zinara’s mandate, according to the Road Act (chapter 13:18) stipulates that the road administrator’s function is to “allocate and disburse to Road Authorities funds from the road fund in accordance with rules prescribed by the road administration.”

However, a forensic audit by Grant Thornton reveals massive abuse of funds by the road administrator where during the period under review, between 2011 to march 2016, Zinara collected USD$589,2 million and only disbursed a paltry USD$160 million (27,3%) and gobbled close to USD$428,4 million (72,7%).

Observers said despite factoring in other expenses such as wages and administration cost Zinara could have disbursed close to 70% of its revenue to the road authorities.

Documents show that Zinara also directly paid USD$ 71 million and R31 million between 2011 and 2016  to 17 contractors without going to tender.

The companies include Badon, Bitumen World, Draw card, Eathset, Forit, Haingate, Femus, Fossil, Jepnik, Madz, Tencraft, Notify Bermipools and Twalumba.

Zinara board Chairperson Engineer Michael Madanha could not comment as he was said to be in a meeting.