Source: $211K youth project sinks – NewsDay Zimbabwe May 15, 2017
CHIVHU — THE Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe (IDBZ) has lost $211 213 which it loaned through the Youth Development Fund to Kadungure Piggery at Nyahoni in Chivhu after the project was badly run and incurred serious losses.
BY VENERANDA LANGA
MPs from the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Youth, sponsored by the Southern African Parliamentary Support Trust (Sapst), visited the Kadungure Piggery project on Saturday, only to find empty pigsties, overgrown grass and no activity at all at the piggery project run by the Ministry of Youth despite getting a $260 000 capital injection.
The committee, led by Gokwe-Nembudziya MP Justice Mayor Wadyajena, was in Chivhu as part of its nationwide tours to investigate how the $40 million Youth Development Fund (YDF), bankrolled by four banks, CABS, CBZ, IDBZ and Stanbic Bank, was utilised.
Tafi Greemas Mashonganyika, the deputy director for economic empowerment in the Ministry of Youth told MPs that in 2009 the Kadungure piggery project received $41 280 from the YDF, in addition to a $211 213 loan from IDBZ.
Mashonganyika said at one point the piggery had 600 pigs, before it collapsed due to poor management.
“We anticipated market breakthroughs at Colcom and other big butcheries, but they condemned our pigsties and as a result we had to continue keeping the pigs and feeding them,” he said.
Mashonganyika said as a result the pigs were over 60 kilogrammes, and were no longer marketable, and had to be sold as commercial pork to produce sausages and bacon.
“At the end we had overstock and could not feed the pigs, and we had to sell them to meet the salary and utility bills, and in 2012 we had a sales turnover of $43 680 against a target of $197 000. This was raised after selling 353 pigs.”
Mashonganyika said the Youth ministry granted them an order to wind up business in 2013 when their monthly expenses were over $20 000 and yet they were making $17 000.
He said they also accrued salary arrears and electricity debts resulting in power being cut off.
“We failed to make a breakthrough at Colcom by virtue of our pigsties which needed $5 000 to uplift them. We said we will pay the workers owed salaries using pigs, but only two workers took the offer, while the others refused.
This caused a backlog as we had to continue feeding the remaining pigs.”
Chitungwiza North MP Godfrey Sithole queried how the Youth ministry could allow them to pay salary arrears using pigs.
“I am worried about this [Education minister Lazarus] Dokora way of using livestock to pay salary arrears with pigs. How do you then calculate statutory obligations like pay as you earn and Aids Levy from pigs?” queried Sithole.
As things stand today, it appears the $211 213 loan has sunk down the drain as the facility has been turned into a national youth vocational centre.
A member of the committee Jasmine Toffa (MDC-T) expressed shock at the level of corruption exhibited in the disbursement of public funds, particularly the YDF, adding that the defaulters (80%) should be brought to book.
“This is a job that needs to be done by the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission. All projects are fraught with irregularities,” Toffa said.
COMMENTS
Listen to what they want us to believe…
“We anticipated market breakthroughs at Colcom and other big butcheries, but they condemned our pigsties and as a result we had to continue keeping the pigs and feeding them,” he said.
“Mashonganyika said as a result the pigs were over 60 kilogrammes, and were no longer marketable, and had to be sold as commercial pork to produce sausages and bacon.”
Have you ever heard such cry-baby and pathetic excuses? Tafi Mashonganyika is somehow suggesting that the blunders were made by Colcom and the “other big butcheries”, and not him and the pig project’s management.
We have all heard the story of the legendary Greek King Midas. Everything that he touched turned to gold, so much so that he almost died of hunger and thirst. He then had to beg his benefactor for this special gold making power to be removed.
Well with ZANU PF we have something similar. But everything ZANU PF touches turns to dust…or something even more smelly. But the twist with them is that it is us, the ordinary people of Zimbabwe that then die from hunger and thirst, while ZANU PF runs with all the gold to Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore.