Copac gobbles $45m

Gift Marunda said their budget ballooned an extra US$24 million because of several unbudgeted expenses undertaken during the process.
He said the US$45 million was still not enough if Copac was not strict with its expenditure. To complete the remaining stages of the process, Mr Marunda said, Copac required nearly US$4 million.
Mr Marunda said the drafting stage which is almost through required US$500 000 while the second All Stakeholders Conference will gobble US$3,1 million.
He said the preparatory work for the referendum will require US$200 000 while the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission will fund the referendum. Mr Marunda said a bigger chunk of unbudgeted expenses were incurred during the outreach programme. He said the outreach was supposed to be done within 65 days but it ended up taking 105 days.
“Everything changed when we went to outreach. Our budget for the outreach was US$3million basing on the number of days for the process.
“We thought that there were going to be 71 rapporteurs but due to the tripartite nature of the process, we ended up using 210 rapporteurs and our budget shot up by two thirds,” he said. Mr Marunda said Copac also hired 260 vehicles that were attracting US$100 a day without fuel expenses.