via Editorial Comment: Performance-related contracts a must | The Herald December 17, 2014
NOW that the clean-up of Zanu-PF has largely been done, though ongoing, the focus should turn to State enterprises and parastatals which have been identified as integral to economic revival, particularly the ground-breaking infrastructure deals signed after President Mugabe’s 13th State visit to China last August. For a long time now, the word parastatal has been associated with administrative paralysis and gross inefficiency, with some State-owned enterprises making losses as if they were going out of fashion.
What has been baffling is that most of the public entities are virtual monopolies that do not have anything in terms of local competition.
This development should have seen them operating profitably.
More so by virtue of delivering strategic services and goods, the parastatals were always being bailed out by Government whenever they experienced cash-flow problems, but they had nothing to show for the consistent capital injections.
Year after year, most of the entities religiously posted losses leaving people wondering what exactly was the problem with public enterprises. Though reports abounded of gross-mismanagement, it was not until parliamentary portfolio committees began probing the mysterious losses that shocking findings were revealed.
The committees unearthed wanton negligence chief among them, the failure by boards to produce audited accounts, unwillingness to fill critical administrative posts with substantive staff and the penchant by board members to sit on innumerable boards, a development that compromised their effectiveness.
It is actually shocking that in a country with a highly educated workforce in need of jobs, and with unemployment hovering around 70 percent, a few CEOs can monopolise key posts, and then leave a lot of portfolios in their organisations vacant.
Even more unpardonable was filling key posts with staff in acting capacities for years on end, which meant they could not be held accountable for their performance as well.
It is evident that the board members and CEOs could afford to do so because they were not being taken to task for the state of their enterprises. For even when they made losses they always ran to Government with the begging bowl to get more money to pour down the drain.
Eight years ago, November 2006, Government announced stringent measures to monitor the operations of public enterprises.
The measures; which were announced by then Vice President Joice Mujuru, involved putting all CEOs of parastatals on performance-related contracts and ensuring that line ministries keep a close eye on operations to ensure good corporate governance.
If these measures, which are standard procedure in the private sector, had been implemented religiously they would have ensured that public enterprises play key roles in the economic turnaround effort instead of leaving the mantle on the private sector that has been, at times, manipulated by forces inimical to the turnaround programme.
But as we saw last year with the salarygate scandal, nothing appeared to have been done as fat cat management was growing fat at the expense of the organisations and the welfare of workers.
We hope as we go into 2015, the Code of Good Corporate Governance drafted this year will be the public enterprise bible along with the performance-based contracts that never left the shelf.
From now on, in the spirit of Zim-Asset, performance must be the buzzword.
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