Online Reporter
In terms of revenue, expenditure and staffing, Harare City Council is the second largest entity in Zimbabwe, bigger than every private sector company and parastatal and second only to the central Government itself in size.
This demands a very high standard of financial management and accounting procedures, especially as its “customer base” is so large, with revenue coming from hundreds of thousands of businesses and households, or at least, supposed to be coming from the owner of every business operating in the city and every property owner. Expenditure is almost as complex, with besides the large payroll, there being thousands of other payments needed each month.
Up until 2019 the city had for some years been using an enterprise resource planning system supplied by Quill Associates. A dispute in that year over the currency of payment saw Harare City Council just dumping that system, without a replacement.
These sort of disagreements do arise and entities do change their software suppliers and advisers, but when they do, they have the replacement lined up so the changeover is as seamless as possible and generally there is a belief that the new supplier is better.
Harare City Council did not follow this standard practice. After dumping Quill it switched to a software system that is specifically designed for small and medium businesses, some of which in a Zimbabwean context would be considered in the lower ranks of large enterprises. But we are talking about companies with at most a couple of hundred staff.
Within its designed limits the system is considered good, but it certainly is not the sort of enterprise resource planning system needed by a very large and complex organisation like Harare City Council. The council had further issues, including its network, which saw data being held on flash drives and spreadsheets being used in contexts where almost any business, even quite small ones, would use a proper database.
Since then, there has been mounting pressure on the city council to restore an enterprise system, with general agreement that even if there was to be a new supplier, Quill would still have to be brought in to bring the accounts up to date so they could be transferred properly to the new system. This was the recommendation made by the then Auditor General Mrs Mildred Chiri, who found she could not audit the accounts because there was not enough information.
Mrs Chiri brought up accounting disasters such as millions of money that could not be accounted for, no one being able to tell her what had happened to it, or even it had existed in the first place. She was careful not to state money was being embezzled, but was willing to say that she could not tell if money was being stolen or if everything was just an accounting disaster.
Vague efforts were made over the last almost six years to put in place a proper system, but very vague with the costs of the most serious attempt being immense, many times the cost of returning to Quill and raising suspicion that the quote included pay-offs and backhanders. It was killed.
The accounting mess, with no one really able to tell what is happening at least in full, has led to vast losses. Besides the missing or unaccounted for US$200 million from 2020, estimates have been made by suspended acting town clerk Hosiah Chisango, who is an engineer not an accountant, that losses falling through the accounting holes could be as high as US$70 million a year.
These six years have seen top Harare officials at some stage being suspended and several facing charges. Survivors have managed to make sure they get their full benefits, including luxury SUV vehicles, the total cost of which would have been very helpful in sorting out water supplies or buying a modest fleet of new garbage trucks.
Rows within council have seen suspicions ventilated that some officials are dragging their heels because their own records would be exposed if the accounts were sorted out, or even in the wilder allegations that they have been involved in more than just bad judgment and padding of perks, but have had their hands in the tills.
Last year it was assumed that significant progress would be made with Quill Enterprises being brought back for a year to recreate the accounts since they pulled out or were pushed out, and while a decent set of accurate accounts were being brought into the light, tenders could be floated and adjudicated for a more permanent system. Quill might well be the winner, but they would have to compete.
The need for Quill to be involved in the initial stages of sorting out and reconstructing the bad and missing accounts seemed to have been accepted, the only remaining point being the cost, which would have to be negotiated. We stress that if in 2019 there had been a decision to switch over to a new supplier, it would have been relatively easy, without additional expenditure, to move the databases and other system requirements across from one supplier to another if normal procedures were followed.
There appear to have been two sets of Quill figures for reconstruction of the missing accounts, one for a limited operation and one for the full works. The Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe was given the lower limited figure last year and the higher full works figure this year, with zero explanation.
They want to know why the price difference but from public explanations it appears it would be simple to put down the reasons based on different levels of work and so satisfy PRAZ. It appears that there are simply more delaying tactics being exercised by some, or that the incompetence in parts of the city council are even worse than most people realise.
The time for delays and delaying tactics seems to be long past. Like every other business or services entity, large or small, Harare City Council needs to have accurate and complete accounts, audited in time, so that everyone knows just what is going on.
Remedial action can then be taken when necessary, such as valuing for rates those huge new suburbs with the ranges of households and businesses, and then getting every property owner to catch up on their rates arrears and getting every business licenced.
