Another miracle at Town House as US$250m vanishes into thin air

EVERY TIME we think we have heard and seen it all, the mamparas at Harare City Council continue to prove us wrong.

They have done it again! At Town House, sleaze, corruption and incompetence have seemingly become a lifestyle.

This time, the city fathers have conjured up another trick after making US$250 million vanish into thin air over the past six years.

According to Mayor Jacob Mafume, this astronomical and unbelievable loss could have been avoided if Harare had a functioning enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

But alas, the very executives who were supposed to implement it have been too busy ensuring it never sees the light of day.

Why? Because, in the absence of proper systems, looting is a breeze.

This is why many wilfully remain averse to technology, because it will naturally spell doom to their criminal enterprises.

Mayor Mafume took the stand before the Justice Cheda Commission last week and revealed that the 2020 Auditor-General’s report already pegged potential losses at US$200 million.

He suspects the actual figure is at least 25 percent higher. Mafume lamented that his efforts to engage the previous ERP implementer, Quill Associates, were met with nothing but stonewalling from the procurement department.

And who can blame them? Why bring in a system that would expose the looting?

Instead, they have been on a five-year holiday in what the mayor aptly calls a management paradise — a place where audits do not exist, oversight is a foreign concept and incompetence is richly rewarded.

When grilled on why the city’s councillors allowed this daylight robbery to continue, Mafume attempted to wash his hands clean faster than Pontius Pilate.

“I have tried everything humanly possible to get an ERP at council,” he declared.

“I end up being accused of interference.”

Of course, the councillors themselves — many of whom would not know an ERP system from a vending permit — have been lame ducks, easily hoodwinked by executives who insist the city can operate just fine without one.

And what is the latest excuse from the Town House mafiosos?

According to Mafume, they have been given directive after directive to implement an ERP, yet they keep playing a game of bureaucratic hide-and-seek.

“They will find a reason from pillar to post not to implement it,” he bemoaned.

The result has been a billing system so dysfunctional that residents are being double-billed, their records mysteriously disappearing and service delivery going the way of the missing millions — straight into oblivion.

With scandals continuing to tumble from Town House like skeletons from a serial killer’s closet, one gets the feeling that the circus at City of Harare is now coming to an end.