The Sunday Mail
Sunday Mail Reporter
FIVE hundred people were drawing salaries from Harare City Council for over a year despite not doing any work after they were seconded by MDC-A councillors.
Sources inside Town House told The Sunday Mail the ghost workers were recruited as a way of rewarding them after campaigning for the opposition party ahead of the 2018 harmonised elections.
Around 400 were deployed to the municipal police department while the remainder were posted to the department of water and other divisions.
It has been learnt that the workers were needlessly recruited by council in 2020 in contravention of council’s prescribed recruitment procedures.
“The over-employment was done to award opposition political activists as well as position them to key council positions in order to ring-fence their corrupt system, which was done through recruitments early in the year 2020,” said one source who refused to be identified.
Another source from council’s legal division said a senior City of Harare director (name supplied) approved the recruitment.
“He has messed up on council procedures and has used suspended town clerk, Hosiah Chisango, to block an investigation into over-recruitment,” said the source.
It is further claimed the director stopped an investigation which sought to establish why ghost workers remained on council’s payroll for a year.
“If he is not afraid, why is he engaging and paying certain councillors to block the coming back of certain employees with labour judgements in their favour?”
HCC spokesperson Mr Michael Chideme said: “Still to get verification on the matter. But would encourage anyone with that evidence to produce the names of the ghost employees to assist with investigations if there is any truth in the allegations.”
