Opinion / Columnist
Corruption at City of Harare continues unchecked
12 Sep 2020 at 07:40hrs | Views
CORRUPTION at the City of Harare continues to go unchecked. We have noted a number of irregular allocations of stands which have been swept under the carpet without serious investigations.
Sometime last year in December, Harare City Council instituted an investigation into the allocation of stands by the city's housing department. A team headed by Belinda Kubvoruno and three junior officers was tasked with the investigations.
The investigations were mainly centred at the housing department and on activities on the principal housing manager Edgar Dzehonye. The facts are as follows:
Kubvoruno and her team were promised stands by Dzehonye so that they would not implicate him in illegal allocations.
Kubvoruno was then unprocedurally allocated a stand in Marlborough suburb without being on the official housing waiting list and without being interviewed for suitability.
An offer letter was then issued to Kubvoruno on December 19 2019 for stand number 4970, TPF/ WR/60/19 Marlborough, Harare. This offer letter was received at the district office on January 20, 2020 and an account was supposed to have been opened at the office.
However, the system was down at the office and people were making payments into a control account. Kubvoruno then made a payment of $50 000 as intrinsic value of the stand.
On August 1, 2020 the issue of unlawful allocation of stands resurfaced and council decided to investigate the matter.
Kubvoruno was again at the forefront of these investigations despite her being a direct beneficiary of the same flawed and corrupt process she was supposed to investigate.
She then realised that in the course of their investigations her file, which was at the district office, would be discovered and, therefore, unearth the illegal allocation of stand number 4970 Marlborough to herself. She went to the district office and withdrew the file and she instructed a third party to sell the stand to cover her tracks.
Kubvoruno's activities indicate a deep-seated culture of corruption in the council and the ability to manipulate systems to the benefit of officers entrusted with the responsibility of allocating stands.
The question is how then does an officer who is implicated in corruption tasked to investigate the same? Kubvoruno and all those implicated should be subject to investigations themselves and should be nowhere near this process.
In fact they should not be allowed to interfere with the process of investigating the illegal and unprocedural allocations.
We, therefore, urge the city fathers to act in good faith and clean up the mess created by their predecessors.
Sometime last year in December, Harare City Council instituted an investigation into the allocation of stands by the city's housing department. A team headed by Belinda Kubvoruno and three junior officers was tasked with the investigations.
The investigations were mainly centred at the housing department and on activities on the principal housing manager Edgar Dzehonye. The facts are as follows:
Kubvoruno and her team were promised stands by Dzehonye so that they would not implicate him in illegal allocations.
Kubvoruno was then unprocedurally allocated a stand in Marlborough suburb without being on the official housing waiting list and without being interviewed for suitability.
An offer letter was then issued to Kubvoruno on December 19 2019 for stand number 4970, TPF/ WR/60/19 Marlborough, Harare. This offer letter was received at the district office on January 20, 2020 and an account was supposed to have been opened at the office.
However, the system was down at the office and people were making payments into a control account. Kubvoruno then made a payment of $50 000 as intrinsic value of the stand.
Kubvoruno was again at the forefront of these investigations despite her being a direct beneficiary of the same flawed and corrupt process she was supposed to investigate.
She then realised that in the course of their investigations her file, which was at the district office, would be discovered and, therefore, unearth the illegal allocation of stand number 4970 Marlborough to herself. She went to the district office and withdrew the file and she instructed a third party to sell the stand to cover her tracks.
Kubvoruno's activities indicate a deep-seated culture of corruption in the council and the ability to manipulate systems to the benefit of officers entrusted with the responsibility of allocating stands.
The question is how then does an officer who is implicated in corruption tasked to investigate the same? Kubvoruno and all those implicated should be subject to investigations themselves and should be nowhere near this process.
In fact they should not be allowed to interfere with the process of investigating the illegal and unprocedural allocations.
We, therefore, urge the city fathers to act in good faith and clean up the mess created by their predecessors.
Source - newsday
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