Online Reporter
Zvikomborero Parafini
PROSECUTOR General, Honourable Loice Matanda-Moyo yesterday explained why the National Prosecuting Authority is operating on numerous acting senior management positions.
Matanda-Moyo was responding to a question from H-metro after her 2025 Strategic Direction Address at the National Prosecuting Authority head office in the capital.
The Prosecutor General was asked if the effectiveness of operations in the Authority is not being slowed down by the fact that most of the senior management positions have people in acting capacity.
According to the statistics released by the Authority, there was a reduction in the case clearance rate in 2024.
The clearance rate for 2024 of 67,9% is slightly lower than that of 2023 which was 71.83%.
In response, Matanda-Moyo said:
“We have a lot of persons on acting positions, the secretary of the authority, the deputy prosecutor generals are all in acting positions, however the problem is that in most of the acting positions, we had not yet regularised the organogram but I’m happy to say the organogram has now been authorized and has sailed through.
“We have been given authority to fill in 167 posts this year, and amongst those are the high posts, so they will be filled in anytime soon, we are simply finalizing with treasury on a few issues.
“Of course working with people who are in acting positions can be difficult, we really want people who are in positions permanently so that there are consequences for failing to achieve certain standards because right now, we can’t fault anyone who’s in acting positions because they will simply tell us that they are doing the organization a favour and we should be grateful for that which is unacceptable.”
Matanda-Moyo was also asked on the collaborative measures being taken by the authority to protect its personnel from harm, the most recent being the prisoner who took a gun to court and later escaped.
“It’s a first incident of its kind, and having experienced that, all the stakeholders involved have had a discussion pertaining the matter because we value the safety of our prosecutors, magistrates and all the stakeholders involved.
“The issue has been discussed and it has been implored that all the people involved must be prosecuted so that there’s no recurrence in future. I’m happy that all the suspects have been apprehended and investigations are underway,” she said.
