Two Mutare city bosses forced out

TWO Mutare City Council senior officials were reportedly forced to resign amid allegations of misappropriation of funds, misconduct and being involved in underhand deals.

City engineer Donaldson Nyatoti and chief librarian Darlington Mandowo were reportedly forced to resign from council after their shortcomings were exposed following internal systems that had been put in place.

Mutare City Town Clerk Mr Joshua Maligwa confirmed the developments.

Mr Maligwa said council had since been given a directive to lodge a complaint with the police for their arrest.

“Chief librarian Mr Mandowo has since resigned and I am being told that Engineer Nyatoti has also resigned although I am yet to see his resignation letter,” said Mr Maligwa.

He said Mr Mandowo was forced to resign amid reports of serious scandalous activities that involved fraud that saw the council being prejudiced of nearly US$10 000.

“Mr Mandowo was involved in a number of scandals and fraudulent activities. He is alleged to have forged travel and subsistence allowances where he claimed to have attended Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF) workshops in Harare. It came out that he had not been attending those events since 2013. He would then pocket the money, which amounted to nearly US$6 000,” he said.

Mr Mandowo is said to have lined his pockets with money paid by institutions using the Memorial Library for examination purposes.

He was alleged to have converted all the money paid since 2013 to his own use.

“Instead of remitting the money to council coffers, he wouldn deposit it into his personal account. He never remitted all the money paid by institutions that used the Memorial Library for writing examinations since 2013. The issue is that he would request 50 litres of fuel per week on the pretext that he wanted to use it to power the generator at the library. What’s surprising is that we do not even remember the last time when we had electricity outages. We then picked up the anomaly through the new systems that were put in place. In total he could have misappropriated more than US$10 000,” he said.

Mr Maligwa said council had since directed the acting housing director, Rofina Nyamangodo, to lodge a complaint with the police against Mandowo.

He said Engineer Nyatoti’s resignation was “double headed” saying it could have been sparked by the red flag raised against him for incompetence and that he had reached the mandatory retirement age.

“Mr Nyatoti’s resignation is like two sides of a coin in that, on the other hand, he has reached the normal age of retirement. He could have simply decided to go and rest. From another dimension, there were a lot of irregularities that had been happening within his department,” he said.

The town clerk accused Mr Nyatoti of failing to supervise staff within his department to meet set targets.

“He was failing to account for materials avaeiled for road surfacing. He also failed to meet the target for the Hobhouse Primary School and road surfacing in that area. The Central Mechanical Workshop has been failing to meet required performance standards.

“We also have challenges with our water section. Most plumbers put personal business ahead of council business. There was also lack of supervision of staff. We also had problems with Area 16 in Dangamvura in terms of servicing of the area. There were many shortfalls and gaps, which were attributed to incompetence. A red flag has been raised, which could also have forced him to quit,” he said.

Mr Maligwa said there were also a lot of underhand deals that were exposed by an audit report, which pointed out some irregularities within Eng Nyatoti’s department.

He said as council, they were working towards achieving world class city status.