CAAZ prejudiced of landing fees

Zvamaida Murwira Senior Reporter
The Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe lost hundreds of thousands of United States dollars through undercharging landing fees for airlines using Harare, Victoria Falls and Joshua Nqabuko international airports.
In her 2012 audit report made available recently, Comptroller and Auditor-General Ms Mildred Chiri noted that for only one South African Airways craft, CAAZ lost US$22 860 in one year.

Many other airlines – including Kenyan Airways, British Airways operated by CommAir, Emirates, Egyptian Airways and Ethiopian Airways – use these airports, meaning huge sums of money were lost.

Ms Chiri said the CAAZ billing system was not automated and relied on an inefficient manual input system, resulting in the revenue losses. “According to the Aeronautical Information Publication Zimbabwe, an aircraft with a MAUW (maximum all up weight, or gross take-off weight) of 40 000kg to 70 000kg should be charged a landing fee of US$350, however, I observed that the South African Airways with a MAUW 46 000kg was being charged landing fees of US$250. This implies that a lower rate was being charged. Therefore, revenue was understated approximately by US$22 860 for 2010.

“Where billing system is entirely manual and the transactions are voluminous, there is risk that due to human error, material errors may go undetected.”

In its response, CAAZ said it was in the process of buying software for Victoria Falls and Joshua Nkomo international airports to replace the manual system.

Ms Chiri lamented CAAZ’ poor debt recovery mechanism on concessionaire entities like National Handling Services, Aviation Ground Services, Carsafe and Catercraft; which had accumulated a combined debt of US$1,1 million beyond the 90-day period within which they should settle arrears. Ms Chiri said the four concessionaires were not abiding by their contracts with CAAZ.

“Their debts were 90-days-old while the contracts require that the debts be settled within a month,” said Ms Chiri. “The risk is the amounts owed may not be recovered. The authority may be deprived the opportunity to review its projected cashflows.”

Ms Chiri blasted CAAZ management for failing to establish performance measurement tools to assess workers. She said out of 58 files examined, 22 had no agreed workplans or performance appraisal systems.

“It was necessary for the workplan for the year to be agreed as a basis for assessing performance of staff,” said Ms Chiri. “This works as an aid for either rewarding or performance gaps identification for corrective action.”

CAAZ said it had since introduced performance management based on the scorecard system but was encountering teething problems implementing the new model.