Correspondent|THE Grain Marketing Board (GMB) has been exposed for lacking basic corporate governance procedures after the parastatal admitted to disposing a consignment of 60 000 metric tonnes of maize imported from Mexico to stockfeed producers cherry picked by the company.
The maize, according to the Acting General Manager of the parastatal Mr Lawrence Jasi, was deemed unfit for human consumption.
It did not take long before the rot was exposed.
The script played out when the GMB management showed serious deficiencies in corporate governance matters when they appeared before the Justice Mayor Wadyajena chaired Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement.
The tell-tell signs were evident when it was revealed that the corporate secretary Mr Rodney Mzyece only signed minutes of a crucial meeting held in 2012 on 11 April 2018, six years later.
Even then, he only signed extracts on resolutions of the meeting.
He was ordered out of the Parliament to collect the full minutes.
For the GMB Acting General Manager, there was no need to advertise since they know a lot of stockfeed producers whom they had told.
Despite the contentious nature of the sell, and the price structure being approved by his ministry, Permanent Secretary Ringson Chitsiko insisted he was in the dark about the consignment.
Some parastatals have been identified as the missing link in achieving targets set in economic blue prints such as the Transitional Stabilisation Programme.
While other loss making state enterprises can be privatised, GMB is a strategic unit that needs to be run professionally under the care of government.
GMB has a history of corruption on a grand scale. In 2012, former President Robert Mugabe said there was need for constant monitoring of GMB operations in the province as grain and inputs meant for the poor were being diverted and benefiting a few senior government officials. No action was taken.
In June 2017, GMB employees were fingered in a scandal in which they rejected grain on the grounds of high moisture content to force farmers to sell at low prices to their accomplices, who operated outside the depots.
Some farmers claimed that they watched their rejected grain being resold on the same day to the GMB by the middlemen.
This came to light following an incident at GMB’s Chinhoyi depot where a soyabeans farmer, who was an agronomist, had his crop rejected, but was certified by a private buyer as having the correct moisture content required by the GMB. Nothing was done to the suspects.
In 2017, GMB incurred a deficit of more than $280 million in one season. Suspected top Zanu PF officials would reportedly masquerade as millers so that they bought grain maize at a subsidised price of $250 per tonne and later re-sold it to the parastatal for $390 per tonne. Nothing was done, again.