The Sunday Mail
Lincoln Towindo Senior Reporter
SPEAKER of the National Assembly Advocate Jacob Mudenda will soon determine whether State Procurement Board (SPB) chairperson Mr Charles Kuwaza should be charged with contempt of Parliament for withholding details of tenders for electricity projects. Clerk of Parliament Mr Kennedy Chokuda said Mr Kuwaza’s fate “will be decided in a matter of weeks”.
Adv Mudenda is studying an application by Parliament Committee on Mines and Energy to have Mr Kuwaza charged.
The committee is chaired by Zanu-PF’s National Assembly representative for Gutu Central, Cde Lovemore Matuke.
“The application is handed to the Speaker, who studies it before determining whether there is a prima facie case and making a ruling before the House,” said Mr Chokuda.
“A member of the House will then move a motion calling on the SROC (Standing Rules and Orders Committee) to set up a Privileges Committee.
“Following that, the SROC will set up the committee, which then investigates the case before reporting to the House, which will then endorse or throw out the report findings.
“In the case of the SPB boss, the Speaker is studying the application and will soon make a determination.”
If found guilty of contempt of Parliament, the SPB boss faces a fine since the House cannot send him to jail owing to changes brought about by Section 148 of the Constitution, that fundamentally reduced the powers of Parliament.
Mr Kuwaza stands accused of failing to take business of the Legislature seriously after refusing to provide vital information requested by the House.
He caused a stir in Parliament on two occasions earlier this year when he refused to answer questions related to the tendering system for Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC) and the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) projects.
Zimbabwe is currently going through one of its worst power shortages crisis in recent history owing partly to the SPBs failure to speedily award solar power station construction tenders three years after floating the adverts.
Parliamentarians suspect Mr Kuwaza is sabotaging the projects.
He appeared before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy twice in June, but was booted out after failing to answer questions from the legislators.
The committee then wrote to the Clerk of Parliament advising him of their intention to charge Mr Kuwaza.
Mr Kuwaza initially appeared before the committee on June 30, but the meeting was aborted after it was discovered that he did not provide answers as had been asked in the invitation letter sent to his office on June 9.
He later appeared before the same committee on July 6 but it became apparent during deliberations that Mr Kuwaza had not prepared a written response as directed.
Efforts to get a comment from Mr Kuwaza were fruitless as his mobile phone was not reachable.
Several electricity generation projects have stalled due to red tape at the SPB, prompting Parliament to investigate.
In 2014, Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa accused the SPB of awarding tenders to briefcase companies, resulting in the increase of the cost of doing business.
Describing the tendering system as the “capital city of corruption”, he added that the board had been awarding lucrative tenders to middlemen.
Government is transforming the SPB into a procurement standards and guidelines-setting authority.
The reforms will decentralise procurement to procuring entities, which will adopt international best practices like e-procurement to enhance efficiency, transparency and accountability.
