The Sunday News
THE Government introduced a subsidy on mealie-meal to ensure that citizens have access to the product, as its cost was getting out of the reach of many.
The noble move was meant to ensure that no one goes to bed on an empty stomach. However, some corrupt people with access to the product then devised ways to enrich themselves and by so doing, sabotaging the Government initiative.
The product, sold through the Grain Marketing Board (GMB)-owned Silo Foods Industries, was now readily found on the black market, with shops having nothing to sell to desperate citizens. We therefore applaud the GMB for being proactive and suspending workers accused of diverting mealie-meal to the black market.
Our sister paper, Chronicle, reported last week that five workers at Silo Industries in Bulawayo have been suspended pending investigations for their alleged crimes. The underhand dealings within the parastatal were recently unearthed following an internal audit, which was preceded by an investigation into operations at Silo Foods Industries in the city by a roller meal taskforce chaired by Industry and Commerce Deputy Minister Raj Modi, who confirmed the suspension of the five GMB employees. The taskforce reported the matter to the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc).
The recently constituted roller meal taskforce’s mandate is to ensure transparent and equitable distribution of the product throughout the entire supply chain.
“The depot manager and people in the sales department operated as a syndicate to feed the black market with the subsidised mealie-meal. In some cases, you would see a 30-tonne truck transporting mealie-meal to these pseudo shops and starving registered traders and other big supermarkets,” said the source.
Deputy Minister Modi said the suspensions follow investigations by his taskforce, which has since managed to identify syndicates causing artificial mealie-meal shortages.
“My taskforce team recently unearthed serious irregularities at the GMB depot in Belmont and the manager and his team were involved in diverting subsidised roller meal to the black market. As I speak, they have been suspended pending hearings. In fact, from the Government position, we are quite disturbed by what we have discovered and some of the culprits responsible for creating supply and distribution anomalies have been identified.”
We urge the authorities to make sure that they dismantle the whole chain that was taking away subsidised mealie-meal from official channels and feeding the black market for personal gain. Such a move should also be extended to other areas like the fuel sector, where the product is not available in service stations, but readily available on the black market.
It is the duty of every citizen to fight corruption. As President Mnangagwa is on record as saying, all Zimbabweans must adopt a culture of honesty and hard work to curb corruption that has eroded national values.
“We need to inculcate honest hard work among our people. When that is done, anybody who sees that somebody does not value hard work, but values criminality; those people will be exposed. I believe that if all of us continue to say, let us be honest, let us be an honest hard working population, then we can cross the River Jordan. But as it is, there is weakness in every level of society we can talk about. As I said, my Government, my administration will continue to tighten (laws on corruption).”
President Mnangagwa said the Constitution provided for the establishment of Zacc as a body to fight corruption and it was the citizens’ responsibility to join the fight against graft.
“We have a commission to fight corruption, but how do we fight corruption? We need the support of our population, our people, because this corruption is among our people, both in the public sector and in the private sector. Critically, the public itself must participate in fighting corruption. It will be a misfortune if our people think that the executive has a duty to discover corruption. It is a duty of everybody in society. It is our intention as Government to eradicate corruption.”
