Online Reporter
Yeukai Karengezeka-Chisepo
Court Correspondent
A HOTEL waitress and her suspected accomplice were arrested after US$1,500, meant for workshop delegates, allegedly vanished from a conference room in Harare.
Getrude Kachingwe (49), a waitress at the hotel, and Malvin Lawrence Chimanga, who is self-employed, appeared before Harare magistrate Tapiwa Kuhudzai facing theft charges.
The pair was granted bail and remanded to September 8 for trial.
The complainant, Takudzwa Pillay Chinhamora, is employed by Youth Ensemble as a project coordinator.
According to the State, Takudzwa arrived at the hotel on August 18, at around 8.45am, to attend an SP3 planning workshop with 45 other Youth Ensemble employees.
At around 1pm, Takudzwa allegedly told Kachingwe that he was going for lunch with other delegates.
He allegedly asked her to lock the conference room because participants had left their valuables inside. But Kachingwe allegedly told him there was no need to lock the room because she intended to clean it and would keep watch over the conference room.
The State alleges that shortly after Takudzwa left, Chimanga entered the conference room and pretended to be one of the workshop delegates.
He allegedly started using a laptop and acted as though he was working before asking Kachingwe to collect food for him.
Kachingwe allegedly left the room to collect the food, leaving Chimanga alone inside.
She later returned and handed him the meal at around 1.50pm.
When Takudzwa returned from lunch, he allegedly discovered that US$1,500 was missing from his satchel.
The money was allegedly meant to be distributed to workshop delegates as transport allowances. He reported the matter to the hotel’s risk department, which reviewed CCTV footage.
The footage allegedly showed Kachingwe and Chimanga as the only people who entered the conference room during the period in which the money went missing.
A police report was subsequently made, leading to the arrest of the two accused.The US$1,500 has not been recovered.
