A City of Harare Special Committee report on Waste to Energy Project has exposed how Local government minister July Moyo and Geogenix officials used fear against those opposing decisions made by the central government on the Pomona Waste to Energy project.
According to the special committee report, Geogenix officials attended their first meeting at Town House with guns visible in their holsters forcing councilors to walk out of the meeting in fear.
“Geogenix officials attended their first meeting at town house with guns visible in their holsters. Councillors responded by walking out of the meeting. Geogenix started their engagements by deliberately creating an environment of fear, where COH officials and governance structures are subjects. It is important to note that all City of Harare Councillors and employees interviewed during the course of the investigation expressed serious concern over their safety and were seriously and visibly frightened. It is concerning that the COH officials operated in an environment where fear influenced the direction of their decisions instead of quality professional common sense,” reads part of the report.
The report further states that City of Harare officials were afraid of negotiating better terms due to threats on their lives with one councillor telling the committee of receiving a threat to the effect that they would not stay in their house if they do mess up with the Geogenix deal.
“One person who was interviewed said that threats had been made against councillors to the effect that ‘mudzimba dzenyu hamuzogariki’,” further reads the report.
The committee also described the Geogenix project as a bad contract, accusing the company of presenting a financial model with an inflated project capital cost.
“The financial model presented by Geogenix, has an inflated project capital cost, under declares actual revenues, undeclared major revenues in biogas, recycling, of paper, glass and recreation park. And yet it’s still way profitable with an under-declared net profit of US$581 million. In contrast COH net project benefits are negative US435.3 million,” reads part of the report.
The report further accused Geogenix of failing to provide information on proof of funding before securing approval to start construction which was against project governance requirements.
“The project proceeds on the understanding that Geogenix will bring in all the capital to finance it. Yet no information has been provided by Geogenix on proof of funding and on cost of capital. It is a serious abnormality and against project governance requirements for the project to secure approval to start construction without proof of funds,” further reads the report.
Efforts to get a comment from Geogenix Country Representative Dilesh Nguwaya were unsuccessful as he did not pick calls while messages sent via WhatsApp were not responded to.
Source: 263Chat