daniel chigunwe
Thupeyo Muleya Beitbridge Bureau
The prolonged labour disputes between the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) and some of its employees are adversely affecting the deployment of members of staff to most ports of entry and exit, a senior official has said.
The tax collector’s commissioner for Customs and Excise, Batsirai Chadzingwa, said recently that among other stations Beitbridge border post was the worst affected.
He made the remarks while responding to stakeholders concerning staffing issues during an anti-corruption breakfast meeting.
Among other things, inadequate staffing has been attributed as one of the major challenges to efficiencies issues that are fueling corruption between Zimra and its clients.
According to some border stakeholders, people were bribing the customs and other officials to speed up services, since they are limited officials to serve them.
Chadzingwa said they were descending hard on those employees involved in corrupt activities and that some were being suspended while others were being fired.
“Your concerns on staff inadequacies are genuine and are well noted. But then as much as we would want to fill some posts, it then becomes difficult for us to do so when we have pending labour disputes.
“For instance, when we find a person violating the code of conduct we either suspend them or dismiss, and when that person takes us to the labour court and the dispute drags on, we then find it hard to fill their post when the matter is pending finalisation,” said Chadzingwa.
He said efforts were being made to ensure that all labour cases are expeditiously resolved.
The officials said the tax collector was also pressing ahead with plans to automate most services to minimise the human interface between customs officials and the clients.
It is understood that Zimra needs close to 450 workers at the Beitbridge Border Post, but has been working on a low strength staff due to attrition and the continued suspension of those caught up in corrupt activities.
Speaking during the same meeting, Zimra’s chairperson of the Integrity Committee, Samuel Sithole, said they had come up with four policies to minimise corruption within the organisation and the country in general.
“Since the formation of our committee in 2019, we have been consistently carrying out the lifestyle audits (on Zimra employees), anti-fraud, recruitment (we through check the background of potential employees) and disciplinary hearings policies to eradicate issues of corruption which is adversely affecting revenue collection,” said Sithole.
“In addition, we continue to carry out integrity awareness campaigns to influence behaviour change among Zimbabweans”.
He said corruption was a threat to national development and that the committee periodically carried out corruption risk assessments and map the hotspots where corrective measures are then implemented.
Bongani Ndlovu