Tendai Gukutikwa
Post Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Independent Complaints Commission (ZICC) plans to recruit 36 additional officers after Treasury approved the recruitment, as it seeks to address staffing shortages that have constrained investigations into alleged misconduct by security services.
Speaking at the Commission’s Strategic Planning Review Workshop in Nyanga last week, Executive Secretary, Retired Justice Webster Chinamora, said Treasury had approved the additional posts following a job evaluation exercise.
“Of an approved establishment of 144 posts, we currently have 35 officers in post. Treasury has given concurrence to the recruitment of a further 36 posts following the job evaluation exercise, and the Commission has set itself the task of bringing those officers on board without delay. This has left us operating with less than a quarter of our required workforce as we seek to improve investigations into complaints of misconduct by the country’s security services,” he said.
Retired Justice Chinamora said additional staff will strengthen the Commission’s ability to fulfil its constitutional mandate and implement its programmes.
He identified delays in information exchange between the Commission and security services, poor records management, procurement delays and weak departmental coordination as other obstacles affecting its operations.
“The staffing challenges have been compounded by delays in the exchange of information between the Commission and security services, weaknesses in records management, procurement delays and inadequate coordination between departments,” he said, adding that the challenges affected the speed and integrity of investigations.
“We must confront the bottlenecks that have constrained us. Resource constraints. Delays in the exchange of information between the Commission and the services, which directly determine how quickly a complaint can be resolved. Records management, on which the integrity of every investigation ultimately rests. Procurement lead times. Capacity gaps in a Secretariat operating at a fraction of its establishment. And coordination between departments,” he said.
Retired Justice Chinamora called for stronger coordination among departments, saying the Commission needed to provide complainants with a unified service.
“The complainant experiences one Commission, not a set of departments. Intake, assessment, investigation, early warning, legal services, communications and corporate services must therefore operate as one system with one standard of service,” he said.
The Commission also plans to strengthen its Complaints Assessment Committee and Investigations Committee to ensure that cases follow proper procedures and decisions rest on evidence.
Retired Justice Chinamora said ZICC is prioritising decentralisation to make its services accessible to communities outside Harare.
“The Commission is also prioritising decentralisation to ensure that people across the country can access its services and lodge complaints without facing geographical barriers.
“A Commission that can only be reached in Harare is not accessible to the majority of Zimbabweans,” he said.
The decentralisation drive will support the Commission’s target of investigating 300 cases in 2027.
Retired Justice Chinamora warned against interpreting low complaint numbers as proof that security service misconduct is not happening. He said some communities might lack information about the Commission, understand neither its mandate, nor how to lodge complaints, or feel unsafe approaching it.
“The institution needs to examine these challenges and make its outreach programmes more deliberate and responsive to the areas from which complaints are originating, as well as those where few complaints were being reported.
“The Commission is also considering establishing a ZICC Academy to build professional capacity within the institution and across the security services,” he said.
He said the proposed academy and other programmes will require proper costing and measurable targets to ensure effective implementation.
Retired Justice Chinamora said the Commission’s performance should be measured by the quality of its investigations and the remedies it secured for people whose rights had been violated.
“The measure of this Commission will not be the number of pages in its strategic plan or the number of activities it records. It will be the quality and fairness of its investigations, the accessibility of its processes, the integrity of its recommendations, the remedies it secures for those who have been wronged, and the confidence it earns from the people of Zimbabwe and from the services it oversees,” he said.
ZICC derives its mandate from Section 210 of the Constitution, which provides for an independent mechanism to receive and investigate public complaints of misconduct by security service members and remedy harm arising from such misconduct.
ZICC seeks 36 investigators to strengthen oversight
