Air Zimbabwe administrator under fire accused of 'gross incompetence'

AIR Zimbabwe administrator Reggie Saruchera has come under pressure to relinquish his role due to "gross maladministration, incompetence, mismanagement and wrongful and illegal deprivation" of salaries due to 300 workers fired by the airline five years ago, who have been ordered to return to work.

In a landmark judgement delivered on December 7, three Supreme Court judges ordered the national airline to reinstate them to the positions they held when they were expelled at the height of the controversial Zuva judgement of July 2015.

The judgement gave companies the greenlight to fire workers at short notice. It triggered wholesale expulsions across industries, as companies took advantage of the case to trim costs and survive a raging economic crisis. Now, the Supreme Court has said the AirZim expulsions were illegal, placing companies in a dilemma should other affect-ed workers raise issues with the courts.

The court also upheld a previous labour officer's judgement, which has ordered the airline to reinstate staff after "wrongfully, unlawfully and unfairly dismiss-ing (them)...in a typical labour carnage or genocide".

In the latest of a series of twists that have taken place at the airline, while the 300 battled to return, AirZim slipped into administration about two years ago, after government, the 100% shareholder in the airline, invoked the law to save it from liquidation after debts hit over US$300 million.

Saruchera was appointed administrator with the difficult mandate to raise capital, carry out or discontinue any part of the business to make reconstruction successful, operate all AirZim accounts and admit all claims or demands against the airline. Now, in an unprecedented back-lash, returning workers want the High Court to remove Saruchera for failing to pay them their dues.

"From the time that the first respondent (Saruchera) was appointed as an administrator, no substantial update or accounting has been done towards the reconstruction of the second respond-ent (AirZim) to enable the second respondent's employees to get paid what a (is) legion debt due to them among other creditors," according to a High Court application filed by two unions on December 24.

"The first and second respond-ents have either failed, neglected or refused to comply with the Supreme Court judgement of December 7 2020. The Act in terms of which the first respondent was appointed, unlike its counterpart, the Insolvency Act, which deals universally with corporate rescuer measures for insolvent companies or businesses, does not have a specific legal provision for the removal of an administrator at the instance of any aggrieved creditor such as (workers) owed trifling millions of dollars as salaries and benefits. But not with-standing that yawning lacuna or gap in the concerned legislation, such right remains legally alive in terms of the common law and the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court to deal with an application for a declaratory order also provided for in terms of the High Court Act," said the court papers filed by labour lawyer Caleb Mucheche.

"The conduct of the respondent has unduly and unjustifiably delayed the reconstruction of (AirZim) and frustrated the applicants' members as employees who are now creditors to (AirZim) owed over $100 million, and the debt keeps mounting each passing day because the employer-employee relationship remains subsisting as was confirmed by the authoritative Supreme Court judgement of 7 December 2020. The first respondent has failed to execute his duties set out in the Act under which he was appoint-ed as an administrator, grossly neglecting payment of the applicants' salaries and benefits owed and accruing from July 2015 running into millions of dollars, hence the application for his removal owing to the failure to protect and safeguard the concerned employees' right to be paid their salaries and wages," the court application said.

AirZim workers slammed Saruchera for his "tardiness", saying this had extensively prejudiced them and other creditors as hyperinflation had eroded the domestic currency.

Year-on-year inflation declined to 401% in November, from 471% the previous month, but remains the high in Africa.

"The respondent's action or inaction as regards his duties as an administrator demonstrates to the applicants that he is clueless about his duties and that constitutes gross dereliction and abdication of duty," the workers charged.

"For donkey years reckoned from the date of his appointment many years ago to the present date, first respondent has wrongfully and unlawfully failed to convene periodic meetings with applicants' members...typical of the second respondent akin to succumbing to the proverbial sleeping on the wheel, who are creditors. The applicant has no any other remedy left at its disposal save for an order of this court setting aside the impugned appointment and removing the first respondent from the office of administrator," the court papers said.

A spokesman for the administrator has told our sister publication, Zimbabwe Independent that the airline has no capacity to foot the bill.