adminElita Chikwati Harare Bureau
THE Permanent Secretary for Mines and Mining Development Ministry, Professor Francis Gudyanga, reportedly fired the entire management of newly formed Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company and appointed his former student at the University of Zimbabwe to lead the diamond firm. Parliamentarians yesterday heard that Prof Gudyanga’s appointee, ZCDC acting chief executive, Dr Ridge Nyashanu, who is an expert in gold extraction, does not have diamond mining knowledge.
Appearing before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy on the operations of the firm, Prof Gudyanga who is an interim chairman of ZCDC board, failed to defend his appointments at the diamond firm, prompting the committee to urgently demand reports and minutes of the board.
The committee said failure to supply the information would see Prof Gudyanga being charged with contempt of Parliament.
The committee was concerned with the legalities of certain processes and corporate governance issues and recent developments at ZCDC which they felt were prejudicial to the State. This included the appointment of a board, dismissal of 11 employees and appointment of an acting CEO who was said to be Prof Gudyanga’s former student, Dr Nyashanu.
The committee said the ZCDC was formed without an Act of Parliament and a board that was not fully constituted was making decisions that were costly to the nation.
Committee chair, Dr Daniel Shumba, said Prof Gudyanga was not new to governance issues and proper procedures considering that he chaired several boards.
He said the permanent secretary did not have an instrument empowering him to form the company and that the board was not fit to make decisions since it was not fully constituted.
Prof Gudyanga said ZCDC was formed under the Companies Act and was registered.
He, however, confirmed the board was not properly constituted.
Some of the committee members demanded to know whether it was by mere coincidence that the ZCDC board members were all from Manicaland. “The formation of the ZCDC was done in anticipation that the Government will have 50 percent shares while the other 50 percent would come from the private sector. We realised that talks with the private sector had collapsed on 22 February 2016,” he said.
Dr Shumba said the board was unconstitutional and did not have the mandate to hire or fire people.
“You’ve no mandate to hire people. Don’t look surprised. You fire people and meet up with your ex-student and recommend him. You fired chief sorters and replaced them with a company called Heroes Consortium,” he said.
Prof Gudyanga said the people who were fired were on probation and after they completed they were put on polygraph tests and failed to shed more light on the issue.
A polygraph, popularly referred to as a lie detector, measures and records several physiological indices such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity, while the subject is asked and answers a series of questions. It involves inferring deception through analysis of physiological responses to a structured, but unstandardized, series of questions. Dr Gudyanga also failed to provide figures to the committee on the performance of the diamond sector and also the names of shareholders and owners of diamond companies including Kusena.
derick.khumalo