Auditors should take aim at all government institutions

The move by the Ministry of Power and Energy Development to carry out an audit at the operations of Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) Holdings is a welcome move that would reveal the true picture taking place there at the time when loading shedding is blamed on the shortage of electricity in the country. This would make the public know why ZESA is failing to adequately supply electricity to its customers at the time when the energy is highly needed by both the industry and domestic consumers.

Auditing of ZESA Holding operations would be proper as the audit would be able to reveal the number of employees working there and how much they are paid. The public has been questioning ZESA's operations under the background of load shedding which is always affecting them.  People have lost confidence in ZESA operations because they have lost their valuable electrical gadgets through the arbitrarily switching off and restoring of electricity by ZESA without notice. This has created bad relationships between it and its customers. So the audit would put to rest why ZESA is struggling to satisfy its customers.

The audit which the Minister of Energy and Power Development, Dzikamai Mavhaire has indicated that it would unearth non-critical staff that go on to chew substantial amount of ZESA money through salaries would help the power utility to lower its monthly wage bill through the termination of their contracts. The Minister revealed that the power utility is losing substantial amount of money monthly through salaries paid to non-critical staff at the time when ZESA is failing to supply adequate electricity to its customers.

It is against that background that makes the auditing of ZESA operations becoming a welcome move as that would unearth some anomalies on how such non-critical staff was employed. Currently, ZESA is failing to employ engineers who can bring expertise to the development of power generation in the country but got opportunity to employ non-critical staff thereby making its wage bill to reach unexpected levels. So the audit would normalize the operations of ZESA so that non-critical staff who had been unprocedurally employed would be relieved off their duties so that ZESA could save money for critical operations.

Once ZESA is able to save money, then it would be able to employ engineers who would help in the repairing of the aging electric power-generating-equipments in Hwange Power Company, Kariba Hydroelectric Power and other power stations dotted around the country. So the auditing of ZESA Holding operations was long overdue as the public have been suffering silently because of ZESA's failure to adequately generate electricity for domestic consumption.

Minister Mavhaire should be commented for taking that drastic measure to make sure that the public is not taken for granted by ZESA's failure to run effectively  its ways by ordering the audit of its operations. He should also be commented for trying to expose ZESA management's behaviour of allegedly using nepotism and patronage in its employment of staff instead of employing qualified workforce which is of benefit to ZESA's line of operations.

 ZESA cannot survive in a situation where non-critical staff outnumbers critical staff. This anomaly needs to be rectified so that there is no problem of having such situations taking place in such important government institutions. Parastatals are important arms of government which help the government in fiscal build ups and their demise do also affect the government operations. As such some parastatals should be accountable to the public and their operations should be beneficiary to the people.

The move taken by Minister Mavhaire to order an audit on ZESA holdings operations should be a welcome call to all head of departments in both government and parastatals so that they do the same with their operations. Government has been losing a lot of money which is allegedly used in non-critical operations at the time when the government coffers are said to be empty. It is this reason which would make it prudent for government institutions to allow an audit on all their operations and activities so that the workforce within such departments is verified. This is also another reason why Minister Mavhaire needs to be commented by everyone for coming up with such an initiative.

The economic demise of some parastatals and government institutions has been blamed on the sanctions that were imposed on the country by the western world. The western countries imposed sanctions on the country as they reacted angrily on the government's land reform program. It is a fact and appreciable that sanctions did not bring any good to the economy but for the country to burst such sanctions both government and parastatals should be accountable to what they do.

Auditing government institutions would assist in bringing accountability to all workers concerned in those departments. This could sound unpalatable to those benefitting from backdoor operations but for the country to overcome the effects of sanctions everyone in the country has to be accountable to what he/she does. So accountability to any department on its operations can only be possible if auditing of such departments is allowed regardless of who heads it.

In recent years there were some allegations from different quarters that there were some ghost workers in government who were crippling government operations. Such allegations were not verified but some say there is no smoke without fire. So auditing of government departments and parastatals would help the government unearth such alleged irregularities that might have been employed by influential people in both government and parastatals to satisfy their needs.

It should be realised that it is not ZESA alone which has been alleged to have mastered an art of using nepotism and patronage in its employment of its staff but quite a number of government institutions may be doing the same. As such some government institutions' operations should also be audited. In that way, auditing government departments and parastatals should not be viewed as witch hunting by those targeted but that should be viewed as a good way of bringing sanity and accountability into the operations of all government institutions.