Mutare council suspends employee over stands scandal

A senior Mutare City Council employee, Mr Lovemore Chitima, was last week suspended from duty on allegations of fraud and unprocedural allocation of 10 stands, in what is believed to be the tip of an iceberg on underhand stand allocation deals involving employees and city fathers.

The Town Clerk, Mr Obert Muzawazi, confirmed Mr Chitima's suspension on Tuesday afternoon and said investigations were in progress.

He said a disciplinary hearing for Mr Chitima , who was employed as an assistant housing and community service director, was expected to be conducted this week in terms of the Urban Councils' Act.

"Mr Chitima was suspended from duty on April 14, 2010 on allegations of fraud (unprocedural allocation of stands, signing of agreements of sale and cessions, prejudicing of clients and misappropriation of council funds).

"It is alleged that Mr Chitima was involved in the unprocedural allocation of stands and proceeded to do agreements of sale without the express authority of the director and misappropriated the council funds in the process," said Mr Muzawazi.

He said Mr Chitima's suspension had since been tabled before the full council.Mr Muzawazi said the council's General Purpose Committee was expected to carry out a full inquiry into Mr Chitima's conduct and make recommendations.

Although Mr Muzawazi could not be drawn into giving more details on the alleged stands scandal involving Mr Chitima, investigations revealed that the stands in question were infills in the high-density suburbs of the city.

Efforts to get a comment from Mr Chitima were fruitless as his mobile phone was not reachable at the time of going to Press.Investigations also revealed that some of the council employees were involved in shady land deals and were making frantic efforts to cover their backs.

"It is too early for us to say some employees are involved, but we are casting our nets wide.

Anyone with information incriminating some of our employees should come forward because we want to tighten all loopholes involving land sales," said Mr Muzawazi.

Recently the MDC-T carried out an audit on the performance of the council and its party councillors and unearthed stand allocation scandals involving some of the city fathers.The MDC-T deputy secretary-general, Mr Tapiwa Mashakada, said they had since read the riot act to some of their councillors involved in the stands deals.

"A lot is happening in Mutare. We discovered that some of our councillors were illegally disposing stands allocated to them while some of them were borrowing from the council. The council was also repossessing houses from tenants and we said this should stop forthwith.

"We have nothing to hide because where there is a wrongdoing, it should be exposed. We gathered that some of the councillors who benefitted from stands were swapping them with vehicles and we ordered the practice to stop because such actions are driven by greedy.

“We will not tolerate malpractice by our members and I think the councillors now know what their duties are and not to do as they like," said Mr Mashakada.