By Snodia Mawupeni| KARIBA- Police have arrested a suspected fraudster in Kariba in connection with fraud after duping desperate job seekers several thousands of dollars under the guise of the Harare-Chirundu road project, ZimEye.com can exclusively reveal.
Although details were still sketchy at the time of writing, the suspect has been
identified as Tichaona Takawira from the Mafuriranwa Construction Company which is based
in the resort town of Kariba.
He was arrested by the Criminal Investigations Department officers on Sunday
afternoon in Nyamhunga suburb and was at the time of writing as ZimEye reveals, detained while assisting with investigations.
Police sources said Takawira was picked up after several people identified him of
duping them under the claim that Mafuriranwa Construction Company was recruiting potential workers for the highway road project.
The company under John Mafuriranwa is recruiting job seekers who include
builders, general hands claiming that they ‘won’ a tender for the Harare-
Chirundu road project.
They have recruited several hundreds of job seekers in Kariba, Karoi, Chinhoyi
and Harare since last year. The highway road project is still to kick off.
A police source revealed that Takawira is in police custody assisting with
investigations under fraud charges.
The source who cannot be named on Sunday said, ‘We are still yet to get finer
details but it is a scam where some builders paid $10 each while general hands
were paying $5 each. Several people were duped by these conmen claiming
they were sub contracted by the Government to recruit potential workers for
the Harare-Chirundu highway,’ said one of our sources.
Another source told ZimEye, ‘He is likely to appear in court on Tuesday as we are trying to get more evidence on the case,’
A former worker for the construction company, Rogers Kaitano charged saying that
his former boss Mafuriranwa is a fraudster.
‘These guys are conmen and are stealing money from desperate job seekers. I
fell out of favour when I confronted Mafuriranwa that it is criminal for anyone to pay to be employed. After all they are not registered as recruiting agencies,’ said Kaitano in a telephone.
Mafuriranwa had all his three mobile phones switched off when ZimEye tried to contact him over the issue at the time of writing.
Transport minister Joram Gumbo is on record saying Government awarded road tenders to international companies but dismissed local companies that claim to have been sub contracted on the road network project nationally. – ZimEye will keep our valued readers, and viewers informed on developments.