Zesa has fired eight top managers, demoted two and suspended three while the other is serving three months’ notice pending dismissal over malpractices picked up in the forensic audit published last year.

A number of other managers are set to be transferred to posts in other provinces.

Those that have been fired are Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC) operations director Engineer John Chirikutsi, ZPC finance director Mr Hubert Chiwara, ZETDC managing director Engineer Julian Chinembiri, ZETDC finance director Thokozani Dhliwayo, Zesa Enterprises (Zent) managing director Mr Tererai Mutasa, plus two Zent managers identified as Tichivangana and Dafana.

ZPC general manager Mr Washington Mareya has been given three months notice.

Suspended are Zesa head corporate services Mr Rufaro Pasipanodya, Zesa public relations manager Mr Fullard Gwasira and Mr Obson Matunja from the audit department, all suspended pending investigations into possible personal use of Zesa vehicles or a potential fuel coupon scam involving $18 000.

Others suspended last week include section engineer metering Engineer Leonard Chitsina, and Mr Freeman Chikonzo, senior manager Information and Technology pending investigations on a potential fraud involving a local electrical company.

More bosses could be fired once other disciplinary hearings have been concluded while several survivors are said to have been “strongly warned”.

The massive layoffs exercise across the company’s top management layer, executed last Thursday is part of efforts by Zesa Holdings executive chairman Sydney Gata to clean up Zesa’s governance structures compromised in the last few years.

Most executives were fired or suspended or demoted over accusations of alarming financial misdeeds with all fingered in either shoddy deals or ineptitude or following some recommendations of a forensic audit into the operations Zesa and its subsidiaries, conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) which called for disciplinary action against managers suspected to have milked the power utility millions of dollars
and misuse of resources such as fuel.

The shakeup comes at a time when the power utility has been under severe scrutiny from the government, the sole shareholder in the company.

The company has been reeling under heavy losses for years.

The PwC audit unearthed startling accounts of corruption, multi-million dollar tender irregularities, the collapse of governance systems among other transgressions.

It was a bombshell development.

It is understood that prior to officially announcing the changes on Friday at Zesa Training Centre, Gata dispatched the dismissal, suspension and demotion letters to those affected on Thursday.

He then called for a staff meeting at the company’s training centre where he officially announced the dismissals, suspensions and demotions.

Insiders said there is anxiety at the power utility as workers feel Gatais not done yet.

Gata’s focus since his appointment has been to re-organise the top leadership structure of the power utility to remove redundancies, transform Zesa into a vibrant entity by amalgamating Zesa’s four units—ZETDC, Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC), Powertel and ZENT—into one integrated company in a bid to cut costs, weed out corruption and bad management and boost power generation and reduce inefficiencies at the State-owned entity.