malvernmugadzikwa
Debra Matabvu
HARARE town clerk Engineer Hosiah Chisango (pictured) has challenged his suspension and demanded immediate reinstatement, arguing that his removal from office last week by the mayor, Councillor Jacob Mafume, was unprocedural.
Cllr Mafume suspended Eng Chisango on September 20 over several allegations, including alleged involvement in a US$9,2 million streetlights scandal, failure to implement the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, illegally extending his contract beyond its expiry date of July 2023 and awarding tenders to blacklisted companies. In a letter addressed to Cllr Mafume on Friday, Eng Chisango, through his lawyers Guwuriro and Partners, argued that the suspension did not fully comply with the Urban Councils Act.
“We write to confirm that on October 1, 2024, our client was served with a letter of suspension by the office of the Mayor,” said Eng Chisango’s lawyers.
“We further advise that the said suspension partially complies with the provisions of the Urban Councils Act, Section 139 (3) (a), but does not fully comply with the provisions of Section 139 (3) (b) and Section 139 (4) of the said Urban Councils Act.
“Regarding procurement and contract award, our client will say that employees of the PMU (Procurement Management Unit) and other appointed employees from relevant technical departments carry out verifications of bids submitted and the submitting entities, they carry out tender adjudications and all required due diligences and submit the same to the accounting officer for onward transmission to PRAZ (Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe).
“The teams that carry out these processes include members from the legal division.
“All contracts that are signed are witnessed by the chamber secretary who would have gone through and certifies the town clerk to sign.
“If any, all records of blacklisted companies are kept by the legal division under the chamber secretary’s department. These should, therefore, raise red flags in case a blacklisted company has submitted a bid for any tender.
“It is our client’s position, therefore, that this is not a matter that our client can be held liable as the office of the Mayor proposes to do since our client will say that he did put all structures and processes in place to safeguard the City of Harare.”
Eng Chisango said the council had failed to implement an ERP system for five years, including the three years that he was on suspension.
“Our client will say that during that time there was an acting town clerk,” he added.
While he was on suspension, Harare failed to procure the ERP system, said Eng Chisango.
“The issue of the ERP was escalated to full council because of the bottlenecks in the system while our client was not in the office and even on the return of our client the office of the Mayor chaired several special council meetings on this subject and in none of those meetings was there ever mention of our client as the failure.”
“The full council is aware of the challenges the City of Harare is encountering. All the efforts our client has done with his team, supported by council resolutions on this matter, are well-documented,” he said.
Eng Chisango denied altering the council’s organogram and appointing senior officials without authority.
“The human resources and general purposes committee is the committee responsible for structures and a perusal of their minutes will show that there are no changes that were done without a full council resolution,” he added.
“Our client is not aware of any senior official appointed to Grade 1 since the organisation only has the town clerk in Grade 1.
“Other appointments were a result of a job evaluation, which was carried out by council and the report was adopted by the full council of August 18, 2023, which was ably chaired by the Mayor.”
Eng Chisango said he was not on a fixed-term contract and requested council to produce a copy of the contract.
Tinaye Agere
Online Reporter