VINCENT MHENE IN GWERU
The Gweru City Council is set to fire managers at its unit, Go Beer Farms, for ineptitude and management delinquency after it failed to turn around the fortunes of the company, Business Times can report.
The business unit has not been productive as expected and recently had its property attached for failing to honour debts.
The city of Gweru mayor, Josiah Makombe, said Go Beer’s management had failed to breathe new life into the business.
“We seem not to have confidence in those that are running the entity because they are the same people who have been there, and we haven’t seen any change. In our last meeting, we agreed that they were going to do 200 hectares of wheat and only 120 ha were put, and we are not happy with that kind of work,” Makombe told Business Times.
He said council has resolved to dissolve the entity’s current management and also undertake a mini staff rationalisation exercise with an interim committee taking charge pending the establishment of a new management team.
“We have said let’s relook the human capital we have there, do we really have qualified people who can run the farms, so we have put in an interim board comprised of managers and councillors to preside over the affairs of Go Beer before we put in a substantive body comprising members of the public and stakeholders.”
Speaking during a full council meeting on Tuesday this week, some councillors accused the entity’s management of abusing resources.
Ward 13 councillor, Catherine Mhondiwa, said the unit had not been reporting its activities to the council.
“The management there has not been presenting reports of its activities to us. They have been doing whatever they were doing and my plea on Go Beer (farms) is that there is nothing meaningful going on there because all they do is misappropriate funds, take council equipment and never account for it,” Mhondiwa said.
She added: “They have produced some beans and some maize at the farms and we never saw the produce, they just made up some stories on the issue.”
Another councillor, Albert Chirau (Ward 11) said the new interim board should employ new management at the entity and do an audit of its finances and human resources capital.
“Take charge and employ a new leadership of the company, do a systems audit covering operational efficiency issues, human capital evaluation. It`s better the current team is reassigned because it is incompetent and just siphons resources out of the council through paying unproductive people” Chirau said.
Gweru City Acting Town Clerk Vakai Chikwekwe said the Go Beer Farms unit had not been declaring its earnings to the council.
Go Beer Farms are part of Gweru City Council’s strategic business units, which also include Go Beer Brewery and a quarry mining venture.
