HARARE City Council has threatened to hold accountable its officials who sheepishly agreed to sign the Pomona deal without following due process.
MOSES MATENGA
The officials are claiming they were ordered by the government after a meeting involving the Office of the President and Cabinet to simply forego their own feasibility study and work with what a foreign company had done.
Officials at Town House, including acting town clerk Mabhena Moyo who signed the US$400 million waste-to-energy Pomona dumpsite deal, angered councillors on Thursday when they confirmed they signed the scandalous deal after they were instructed to do so even without following procedure after a meeting involving the Office of the President and Cabinet, Local Government Ministry and the central bank.
The deal was then foisted on council officials even without undergoing a feasibility study, a key and compulsory requirement for any such deals.
Councillors hastily convened a special meeting on the Pomona deal on Thursday in which they angrily rebuked officials for succumbing to “bullying tactics” from the government into signing a deal illegally without a bankable feasibility.
“You can’t tell us there was no bankable feasibility study. We can’t continue in a situation where the people admit they did not do any feasibility study (and) that they allowed the contract to go ahead without that,” mayor Jacob Mafume fumed.
“That is completely unfair to the residents. In the report they were supposed to tell us who told them to do what, which officials told them to do that.”
“They work for council (and) why then did they listen to anyone outside council? They can’t be told by whoever to do what they did and fail to say I work for council and I get my instructions from council.”
Mafume told The NewsHawks that council will be guided by the report and recommendations of the special committee set up to investigate the deal and whether due process was followed.
The committee set up is expected to report back to council within 14 days.
Councillors resolved to shelve the deal which they said was a disaster to the cash-strapped local authority.
On what will happen to the officials including the acting town clerk who were part of the deal, Mafume said: “We are going to wait for the special investigations committee, but a lesson must be taught to people at City of Harare and other cities that when you agree to work for council you do that and exactly work for council and defend the interests of the residents.”
“These whispers, these references to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, reference to the Office of the President and Cabinet and other individuals who do not have a mandate is not an excuse,” Mafume said.
Councillors resolved that the contract, pushed through mainly by MDC-T councillors, be suspended with immediate effect.
“You agreed to everything without challenging the deal. l saw no one among council officials who said no to this deal. Residents do not expect us to be pushed around.
“We have lost our power station, our roads and now Pomona. We can’t keep on losing,” Mafume fumed.
