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Zimbabwe: Bigwigs Gobble U.S.$11 Million in Loans
[All Africa] SENIOR officials in the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC), permanent secretaries and military officials were lavished with personal loans amounting to US$11 million at a time the cash-strapped government is struggling to pay its bloated workforce, the Zim-bob-we Independent can exclusively reveal.A loan schedule shows government has, between 2014 and March 2017, advanced loans to senior public officials, some of whom topped up their initial loans, despite failing to service their debts. This comes against the backdrop of a revelation by Auditor-General Mildred Chiri that the broke Treasury has failed to account for nearly US$570 million disbursed to unnamed beneficiaries in the form of loans, exposing bad governance, gross mismanagement of public funds and systematic looting by brass hats. The report raised concern over various issues, including maintenance of accounting records, fraudulent activities, transfers of money from fund accounts, outstanding payments to suppliers of goods and services, use of fund resources as collateral security and unsupported expenditures. Government is spending more than 90% of revenue on recurrent expenditure, with the bulk going towards the payment of wages, leaving very little for capital expenditure and social services provision. Due to constrained cash flows, government has also been failing to pay its workers on time. Documents seen by the Independent show that senior government officials, including those from the OPC, permanent secretaries, military, Zim-bob-we Prison Services and the Zim-bob-we Republic Police (ZRP), have outstanding loans which they are struggling to service. Finance ministry permanent secretary Willard Manungo tops the loan list, having acquired 10 loans to the tune of US$174 000, Civil Service Commission (CSC) boss Mariyawanda Nzuwah (US$155 000), CSC secretary Pretty Sunguro (US$140 000), Media and Information ministry permanent secretary George Charamba (US$120 000), while Environment ministry's permanent secretary Prince Mupaziriho has a loan amounting to US$110 000. Comments could not be obtained from Manungo, Nzuwah, Sunguro and Mupaziriho as their mobile phones went unanswered. Text messages sent to them delivered but were not responded to, including a WhatsApp message to Manungo. Charamba's mobile phone could not go through as he was said to be in Namibia on official government business. Posted by: Fred 2017-07-01 |
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