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Herald Reporter
The Zesa Holdings board has embarked on a training of its directors and other senior managers to apprise them of their rights and obligations in the event that they receive illegal directives from Government ministers.
This is part of recommendations contained in the 2019 PricewaterhouseCoopers forensic audit that unearthed a number of anomalies in the implementation of various projects by the power utility.
The implementation of some of the projects was done following ministerial directives the audit found to be irregular.
Appearing before the Public Accounts Committee yesterday, Zesa executive chairman Dr Sydney Gata said the power utility had begun implementing the recommendations.
“I want to assure this Committee that the new board was instructed by the minister upon being appointed, to prioritise review and implementation of the findings and recommendations of the audit,” he said.
“In our very first meeting on the 18th of December (2020), a major item that we put on the agenda resulted in the appointment of an ad hoc committee of the board with four members to intensify their review and make sure that the board is appraised in detail all aspects about the recommendations and the findings.”
Dr Gata said the ad hoc committee had made progress in its work.
“Both the board and management receive an education on the operations of the statutes that they have an understanding of their rights and obligations and the penalties that accrue in the execution of our projects in terms of the statutes,” he said.
“There has been training of our board members of how they can respond to directives that we perceive are not necessarily consistent with our laws. I am pleased to say as of that time we are following those recommendations religiously.
“Going forward all board members, directors and managers are being trained on how to respond to those situations.”
Dr Gata said the training was focusing on provisions of the Public Finance Management Act and the Corporate Governance Act.
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