By Jane Mlambo| Scandal ridden Zimbabwe Nation Road Administration (Zinara) is once again in the spotlight after its body chairperson Engineer Michael Madanha has been fingered in unilateral appointments of staff and meddling in the day to day running of the parastatal.
Madanha stand accused of seconding a director from the parent ministry who has no knowledge of roads administration as the Acting CEO of Zinara.
“According to the law, Madanha was supposed to appoint one senior director from the organisation as Acting CEO but he took his crony from the ministry who is not qualified. The staff is very disappointed in him and morale is at an all-time low,” said one of the workers at the entity.
Acting in connivance with human resources manager Juliana Maposa, Madanha allegedly appointed five senior staff contradicting the Public Entities Corporate Governance Act which state that the human resource manager cannot oversee the filling in of posts above his/her position.
The Grant Thornton report on ZINARA revealed that the state entity currently does not have approved Human Resources Policies and Procedures manual and this has been happening since 2002 when ZINARA came into existence.
Madanha and Maposa stand accused of nepotism as they recruited their relatives and friends.
“Madanha intends to capture the organisation to fund factionalism and campaigns against Tino Machakaire who unseated him in Wedza South. Madanha to date has withdrawn more than 12,000 litres of diesel to fund his factional operations,” said the source.
Efforts to get a comment from Madanha and Maposa were fruitless as their phones went unanswered.
In April this year, Madanha came under fire from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) for firing the parastatal’s director of administration Precious Murove, a key witness to investigations by Parliament over alleged looting of US$71 million at the organisation.
The PAC suspected the action by Madanha, a former deputy minister during the period under review, was aimed at suppressing evidence because Murove was one of the names that featured prominently in the corruption saga.