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handled US$15 000 in sitting allowances paid to legislators in 2011 as that was done without the involvement of the administration of Parliament.In an interview recently, Mr Zvoma said Finance Minister Tendai Biti had arbitrarily assigned himself the role to handle allowances for Members of Parliament to the Ministry of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs.
This, he said, had created a situation where some legislators who did not deserve the money ended up receiving it.
“Members have been given US$15 000 in sitting allowances in circumstances that in my view, was very irregular. The Ministry of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs has nothing to do with allowances of members. Money was disbursed to members without considering whether one was entitled to that figure, but it is a matter for Treasury to address,” said Mr Zvoma.
“What we have done is to calculate what members are entitled to, then offset it against the US$15 000.
“The majority of members will remain with a positive balance but a few members will have a negative balance. But, that’s a challenge Treasury should manage. It’s a bad lesson created by Treasury for reasons we do not know.
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“Under the doctrine of separation of powers, Parliament is an independent institution and should manage their affairs.
“There is a Clerk of Parliament who is the accounting officer guided by the same rules guiding other accounting officers, but Treasury simply arbitrarily took away that right. Simply because they hold the purse, they go on and assign another ministry.”
Mr Zvoma said what Treasury did amounted to reassigning a Government Ministry and department role, something that was an exclusive preservation of the President who is also Head of State and Government and Commander-In-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces.
“We thought that it was only the President with the power to reassign and not Treasury,” he said.
“Ministry of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs is not responsible for Parliament but that title refers to Government business that is brought to Parliament,” he said.
He said Parliament was bypassed again in handling Constituency Development Fund for MPs.
Turning to ISO Certification given to Parliament, Mr Zvoma said they had attained that despite the limited resources they had.
He said they have worked hard as administration of Parliament and not sought to use limited resources as an excuse for failing to perform.
“It is the administration of Parliament headed by the Clerk that has been certified because it provides a service to the public in general. The purpose was to inculcate a culture of doing business professionally . . . we want to achieve maximum use with the minimum resources,” he said.
One of the achievements, he said, was to produce Hansard, a record of proceedings in Parliament produced verbatim, everyday.
He said they had ensured that Hansard was available the following day of sitting while it was loaded on website two hours after adjournment of the House.
As Parliament, he said, they had managed to benchmark themselves not only with the region or continent but globally.
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