Some years ago, an executive with a diploma in Religious Studies found himself as the Administration and HR director at the Zimbabwe National Road Administration (ZINARA).
Some more shock: In the financial year 2013, seven senior managers received gym equipment worth US$$4 000 per person with a total amount of US$27 000 being shelled out. This came despite the fact that the concerned employees already had a contractual paid benefit to any gym or sports club of their choice.
For the period 2011 to 2013, a hair allowance was paid for every lady employee for a hair do at She and He, Red Rose and Ladies Hairdo saloons for a total amount of US$$24 500.80 notwithstanding that their contracts did not provide for the benefit.
This qualifies to be one of the greatest heists in the corporate sector, one which will be the subject of discussion in public spheres in generations to come.
The parastatal says it is correcting the ills of the past and will embrace corporate governance practices.
The man leading that cleansing process, corporate governance guru George Manyaya is brimming with confidence of the advent of a new ZINARA.
In an acceptance speech after his appointment as the ZINARA board chair, Manyaya said handling statutory funds required high levels of propriety and probity.
He reiterated the same mantra this week with the road administrator publishing a breakdown of how the ZWL$17bn earmarked for road rehabilitation this year would be disbursed.
Manyaya said the disclosure marked ZINARA’s first step in espousing the values of good corporate governance.
Last year, ZINARA disbursed ZWL$9.5bn.
To show that he means serious business, a tough-talking Manyaya pulled his gloves off and exposed how ZINARA disbursed ZW$9,5 billion (US$80 million) to local authorities across the country in 2021 for the rehabilitation of roads but the roads remain in a state of disrepair.
Manyaya said his board is worried that despite the huge disbursements, the roads remain dilapidated.
Proponents of good governance and transparency are now clamouring for investigations to establish what happened to the money disbursed in 2021.
Gone are the days when executives and directors could use parastatals and state owned entities as piggy banks. That culture is now alien to the corporate governance framework which mandates more disclosures and the holding of annual meetings of shareholders
A parliamentary portfolio committee report unearthed that there were no requisite checks and balances and no compliance with sound principles of human resources management.
This resulted in unqualified people being nepotistically recruited without a process of public interviews, public scrutiny and public competition.
“As a result, ZINARA ended up being saddled with incompetent individuals who unfortunately were controlling and running budgets that ran into millions of United States dollars,” the report said.
ZINARA said this week that it had corrected some anomalies and has employed an HR director with prerequisite qualifications.
The road administrator has to go beyond pledges and put in place systems to ensure ZINARA won’t recede to its dark pasts where executives and directors saw the parastatal as a feeding trough and “jobs for the boys” entity.
The task looks daunting for Manyaya and his team. They have the comfort in that Transport and Infrastructure minister Felix Mhona was in the parliamentary portfolio committee that unearthed a number of excesses by board and senior management. They have no choice as the evil that men do lives after them.
