Correspondent|Glen View South MDC Alliance legislator Vimbai Tsvangirai-Java has cleared the air on corruption allegations that has been dogging her for more than five years through media reports.
In 2011, Harare City Council allegedly awarded a water treatment contract multi-million dollar water purification project to Tsvangirai and her husband Apostle Batsirai Java.
Allegations were that that the couple owns Australian-registered company which deals with water purification services, approached the city council for a tender to purify Harare water.
Speaking in an interview on Wednesday,Tsvangirai said she approached the Harare City Council in good faith.
“I approached the Harare City Council with my proposal and underwent all the testing processes with the Standard Association of Zimbabwe.
“The city council engineers also tested the chemicals and we all agreed that we will be given a procurement order valid at $212 000 for a pilot test,” she explained.
Investigations established that Tsvangirai actually toured Sydney with the Harare City Council Water department officials with a written Cabinet authority as is required at law.
“We were told that after the visit the city council would then give us a procurement order as a pilot test,” she said.
“The cost was to be $212 000 and our services wold have cut city council budget on water purification by 50%,” she said.
Tsvangirai Java said her company did all the necessary tests with the Standards Association of Zimbabwe as well as with the City of harare technicians which were successiful.
However, she said after all the tests were done city council never called her for further development and she suspects politics was at play. The whole deal had been passed by a Full Council Resolution rendering it an ‘above board’ arrangement. Tsvangirai said politics came into play as she was accused of being favoured as the late MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s daughter and the deal failed to materialise.
Despite the deal having failed to materialise, she said, her enemies and political foes still allege she was given a US$10 million tender and failed to deliver the services.
M&T