Council shuts dept over graft

Council spokesperson Mr Leslie Gwindi said more depart­ments faced closure if investiga­tions linked them to the illegal allocation of space to car sales.

The city has roped in the police to help investigate at least 27 workers from the closed department who have been sus­pended over the cor­ruption alle­gations.
As part of widening the investiga­tions, council is invit­ing car sales oper­ators who could have lost money to coun­cil officials to come forward.
“As part of the ongoing crack­down on illegal car sales, illegal billboards and vending, a num­ber of irregulari­ties in the divi­sion (city valuer and estate man­agement) have come to light.

“This has led council to sus­pend operations in this division with imme­diate effect. Council urges cus­tomers to bear with us while we clear these inconsis­tencies.”
Mr Gwindi said the depart­ment would resume operations after the investigations.

“This exercise is transparent and needs to redress the imbal­ances that obtain. We value the residents’ co-operation in this respect,” he said.“Some people might be afraid to come out for fear of being labelled accomplices, but infor­mation which they give us might be of their bene­fit.”
Mr Gwindi said in some cases, council officials were issu­ing expired leases to the dealers.
“They duplicated the leases and in some cases you would find a car dealer with a 2009 lease this year,” he said.

 

Some car dealers claimed to             have paid council officials between US$2 000 and US$3 000 for land to set up their busi­ness.
“The amounts they paid were much above those they should have paid if they were to follow the proper chan­nels,” Mr Gwindi said.
“Council has lost a lot of rev­enue because of these car dealers and we are not going to rest until every car sale is accountable.”

Mr Gwindi said illegal car sales mushroomed in the past two years and it had been diffi­cult for council to regularise them.
“We were outnumbered by then,” he said.
“The rate at which we were mak­ing them accountable and the rate they were building did not match and this resulted in the proliferation.

“Apart from that, there were cases of resistance and everyone knows that we have a case at the courts where some­one threat­ened our offi­cers with a gun.”
Mr Gwindi said some members of the municipal police contributed to the delay in demolishing the illegal car sales and garages.
“We now question the behaviour because there were areas where they were instructed to go and destroy, but they ended up skipping some car sales and demolishing others,” he said.

Acting City Treasurer Mr Stanley Ndemera said not all officials in the department were guilty, but sus­pending all of them would allow for smooth investigations.
“The suspensions are simply for facilitating investigations and we are aware that some of them are clean and will be exonerated,” he said.
“No one should interfere with investigations and no one is allowed to visit their offices. In fact, we have changed the keys to those offices so that no one has access to the paper­work.”

Government gave council up to December 31 to remove all illegal car sales and garages.
The directive came after it emerged that only one car sale out of the 200 dotted around Harare was licensed.
Council should also publish all ille­gal car sales and garages by December 20.