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The unfolding events at Premier Service Medical Aid Society, Air Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation have vindicated members of the public’s calls for full-scale investigations into operations of public enterprises. It has always been the public view that most of the challenges facing public companies especially parastatals are a result of corruption. Those that have been entrusted to run these companies are after self-enrichment hence the obscene salaries they are paying themselves.
What justification can one have to pay himself a basic salary of more than $200,000 a month in a struggling economy like ours? It seems executives of these companies are after looting as opposed to fulfilling their mandate of steering these companies out of murky waters.
What is happening at these companies is very disturbing because these companies are supposed to be run by boards of directors that are chosen on the strength of their competencies in the various fields.
These men and women entrusted with the responsibilities of guiding the running of these companies should be individuals of high integrity whose conduct should be beyond reproach. It therefore boggles the mind when executives of public companies engage in looting right under the noses of these men and women that the nation holds in high esteem.
The boards of directors of these crumbling companies have therefore let down the nation big time. They have in fact betrayed the people’s trust. The nation should engage in some soul searching to find out where it went wrong.
To start with, is it the best method for a particular government minister to recommend individuals he or she wants appointed board members of companies under his or her ministry’s portfolio?
Given the unfolding events, it has become abundantly clear that this approach has many shortcomings, loopholes or grey areas leading to the appointment of wrong persons in such very crucial positions. The system is open to abuse by individuals who end up recommending the appointment of relatives, cronies and friends, leaving out competent individuals that bring value to the companies.
There is definitely need to completely change the system to come up with a more transparent system of appointing individuals as board members. There is also need to limit the number of companies that an individual can serve as a board member. The challenge at the moment is for the government to conduct a full-scale investigation of the operations of its companies which admittedly is a mammoth task given the fact that its own senior officials are among the soiled board members that have allowed executives to destroy the companies.
It is only after completing the investigations that government will be in a position to determine the extent of the rot and thereafter embark on a clean up exercise. The immediate action government should take is to re-align executive salaries to the obtaining economic realities. The executive salaries paid by most government companies are totally divorced from the economic realities and as a result are bleeding the companies.
Executives continue to pay themselves hefty salaries despite the fact that most of these companies are making losses and failing to raise working capital.
We want to once again implore government to – revisit its system of appointing board members which in our view is flawed and therefore open to manipulation by corrupt individuals.
Online Reporter