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Zvamaida Murwira Senior Reporter
Parliament has clashed with Auditor-General Ms Mildred Chiri after it failed to deduct money from Members of the Eighth Parliament to recover $13 million disbursed by Treasury for vehicles under the vehicle loan scheme.
Parliament’s Administration department argued that it could not deduct the money since it owed them sitting allowances.
Ms Chiri was not convinced and insisted that legislators should start servicing their vehicle loans.
In her 2014 report, Ms Chiri noted that Treasury paid $13 million the same year to suppliers for the procurement of vehicles for legislators.
“My audit revealed that Members of the Eighth Parliament of Zimbabwe who took delivery of the vehicles were not repaying the vehicle loans as required by Section 4 (b) of Parliament of Zimbabwe Motor Vehicle Revolving Fund Constitution. Parliament did not open books of accounts to record the indebtedness of the Members of Parliament to Government. A nil return for the Motor Vehicle Revolving Fund was submitted for audit, an indication that nothing was owed by MPs despite that Parliament of Zimbabwe had in its files loan agreements signed by MPs,” read her report.
She said the failure to deduct the money might result in Parliament failing to recover funds as happened with the Seventh Parliament.
In its response, Parliament said Treasury had asked them to treat the payment of the loan that had been secured by CBZ as capital transfer under Parliament budget.
It was submitted that legislators had agreed that their unpaid sitting allowances could be credited to offset their loans.
“It is in this context that a nil return was submitted to your office as the Fund was not operational. Repayments by members have not commenced as Treasury has not yet started making available resources to pay members’ allowances since 2013,” read the response.
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