Zimbabwe MPs urged to hold govt accountable

SPEAKER of National Assembly Jacob Mudenda has urged parliamentary portfolio committees to ensure the government is held accountable for the benefit of taxpayers.

Addressing lawmakers during a joint induction workshop for the portfolio committees on Budget, Finance and Investment Promotion and Public Accounts in Kadoma last week, Mudenda said the two committees were the government resource ecosystems employed to assist in the mobilisation of revenue, budgetary allocation of public funds and how they are expended to ensure accountability.

"Consequently, as members of these two committees of Parliament, you have a constitutional mandate to ensure that our government is accountable without fear or favour for the sake of the people of Zimbabwe who expect sound governance in Zimbabwe's democratic theatre," Mudenda said.

"Accordingly, this committee has the stupendous task of assisting the government in coming up with strategic ways of domestic resource mobilisation to beef up the tax revenue regime. Such constructive engagement in the national interest has been embraced by the Treasury in the recent past.

"In this regard, the budget, Finance and Investment Promotion Committee play a crucial role in ensuring the complementarity of the monetary and fiscal policies which must find congruence in their application. To this end, this committee must be on the lookout for policy inconsistencies to forestall such eventualities of policy contradictions."

He said the government accountability matrix was the barometer by which the government can gauge public trust.

"Your compelling role, therefore, in this regard is to ensure that the State and all institutions and agencies of government at every level act constitutionally and in the national interest as peremptorily provided for in section 119(2) of the national Constitution.

"Thus, the palpable role of these two committees ostensibly lies in ensuring that the government's accountability bar remains sustainably high in order to ensure clean governance by the people, with the people and for the people of Zimbabwe," Mudenda said.

He added: "The Public Accounts Committee's responsibility lies in microscopic analysis of the Auditor-General's reports which might expose residual financial improprieties in public expenditure by the government despite the oversight role of the Budget, Finance and Investment Promotion Committee.