Own Correspondent|The Zimbabwe Anti Corruption Commission, ZACC, has warned senior executives in public institutions to stop victimising their subordinates for assisting it with information that can help to investigate possible cases of corruption.

Targeted subordinates were either being summarily dismissed or redeployed to other departments without following due process.

ZACC said it felt betrayed by the actions of such executives which amounted to unfair labour practice and abuse of office.

A case in point is that of eight ZESA Holdings workers who were fired last year for unlawful job action, breaching of the Official Secrets Act and insubordination.

The workers were however, recently reinstated by the new management at the power utility after they were victimised for outing corruption tendencies that exposed some shoddy deals.

ZACC spokesperson Commissioner John Makamure said last week that they were overwhelmed with reports of victimisation of workers in public institutions for assisting the anti-graft body.

“The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission is inundated with reports from the general public in which there is evidence of victimisation by authorities in the public sector,” said Comm Makamure.

“What is utter disturbing is a situation where an entity is visited by the Zacc, either for the purposes of conducting systems audit, investigations or both and later on, some of the employees are served with suspension letters or are advised that the department is in the process of redeploying them to other departments.

“The procedure is riddled with a lot of questions as to whether or not the authorities are aware that there is a Labour Act Chapter 28.01, Statutory Instruments and various regulations, which legally guide any decision-making by them.

“However, such decisions are promptly arrived at just to catch the targeted employees unawares, leave them confused for some time and pounce on the hapless individuals.

“One would rush to think these are simple labour matters, when in essence it is corruption masked in what looks like labour issues.

“If this sinister practice is allowed to persist, then going forward, nobody will be willing to assist either the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission or Zimbabwe Republic Police during investigations. The continued victimisation of innocent employees leaves nobody safe under the caprices of the vastly corrupt bosses.”

Comm Makamure said the problem was being aided by human resources departments that allowed people to be reassigned without justification.

“The second question is how on earth do the human resources departments, charged with the redeployment of employees, accept and redeploy staff without demanding reasons why the redeployments have to be done,” he said.

“One would have thought that the human resources departments should turn down such unscrupulous ways of subjecting employees to unprofessional movements to other departments. In any case, the employees are transferred without following any legal procedure as required in the Labour Act and supporting regulations.”

This, Comm Makamure said, amounted to unfair labour practices, which is also a form of abuse of office.

Source: State Media