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(HERALD) Heads to roll at Air Zimbabwe

Heads to roll at Air Zimbabwe
By Kudakwashe Mutandi
Sunday, 15 May 2011 00:00 Business

A BOARD and management shake-up is looming at the national airline, Air Zimbabwe, The Sunday Mail Business has established. This paper has it on good authority that the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development is working on the restructuring of the board and management.

Sources indicated that heads would roll as new executives are set to be incorporated into the State-owned enterprise with a view to rescuing the sinking institution which was once voted as the best in Africa a decade ago.

The exercise comes barely five months after the group’s chief executive officer, Dr Peter Chikumba, was forced to resign.

“Minister Goche is also set to announce management changes at Air Zimbabwe once he gets the green light from Cabinet. This is also part of the agreement that he struck with the pilots a fortnight ago,” said the source.

The new changes will see former Air Zimbabwe acting chief executive Captain Oscar Madombwe being co-opted onto the board, first female pilot Emily Njovana coming in as group chief executive officer and Captain Danai Taruvinga as director flight operations. There has been pressure from pilots for restructuring at management and board level.

“For effective turn-around process to work, some of the current top management members and board members should be relieved of their duties. The airline’s board of directors lacks members with competent aviation expertise, and so can easily be misled or hoodwinked by top management who might have their own unsavoury personal agendas,” said the pilots to Transport Communication parliamentary portfolio committee

Added the pilots: “There should be representation at board level by knowledgeable senior and retired flight crew members to give professional advice and guidance to the board. There should be pilot representation at a top management level, including the executive committee and in human resources, where recruitment of key flight operations department personnel is concerned.”

The development comes after reports that the Kadzura-led board had failed to meet due to acute differences and has also split the management as executives jostle for the CEO’s post.

Insiders also said the board had been split into two: a pro-Biti faction on one hand and a pro-developmental faction on the other. The factionalism threatens to paralyse operations, observers warned.

The fallout among board members was occasioned by recommendations by the parliamentary portfolio committee on transport and communication for Treasury to resume funding the entity until its privatisation is completed.

Against this background a storm is also brewing at the airline following the appointment of forensic auditors whose tenure lapsed in March but are still operating from the parastatal, allegedly gobbling up more than US$10 000 per week. It has emerged that the forensic auditors, identified as BCA Auditors, were contracted to conduct internal investigations for a duration of four weeks on January 17 2011. It is not clear why the auditors are continuing.

Documents reveal that BCA has overstayed at the parastatal after they initially asked for a four-week extension, which has lapsed, to March when the workers started querying their stay.

The scope of the audit was supposed to cover the period between January 2008 and June 2010, but they are going back as far as 2003.

“BCA commenced forensic audit work on January 17 2011. They were initially contracted for four weeks but have asked for an additional four weeks,” read part of the minutes of the last Audit and Finance Committee meeting held on March 3 this year.

Employees at the parastatal said the auditors had overstayed and are drawing huge financial gains from the airline at a time the quasi-Government institution is cash-strapped. They cited the example of the Harare-Bulawayo and Harare-London flights that failed to take off last week after the company failed to secure cash for fuel.

“We would prefer to have renowned audit firms like KPMG, Ernest & Young, Deloitte or Kudenga who are familiar with our books,” said one employee who preferred anonymity.
“As part of the routine audit, appointment of the auditor was between a time frame of the company’s operations from 2008 to 2010. As if that was not enough, the audit was supposed to be complete by the first four weeks.

Up to this month of May, the auditors are still with us and they are getting more than US$10 000 per week. The company is cash-strapped and we are not flying,” said a workers’ committee member who commented on condition he is not named for fear of reprisals.

Labels: AIR ZIMBABWE, PARASTATALS

posted by MrK @ 1:07 PM