By Staff Reporter
Outspoken Harare East legislator and former Finance minister Tendai Biti has implored the government to cancel the Univern contract which he said was not consistent with the country’s Procurement Act.
Biti charged that Univern was being paid huge sums of money by the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (ZINARA) for using its software to collect vehicle license and toll fees.
He took Transport Minister Felix Mhona to task over government’s reluctance to cancel the contract when parliament had recommended that the agreement be terminated.
“The findings of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report which was adopted by Parliament was that the granting of the contract to UNIVERN was not consistent with the Procurement Act and evidence was produced to show that the Procurement Board never set.
“One of the things that both the Audit Report raise and the PAC made a finding, was that it was unfair for ZINARA to pay these huge amounts of monies that are contained in your answer today to UNIVERN when we owned the vehicles, when we own the database for the vehicles that are moving here and when UNIVERN had not constructed a single tollgate.
“So my question to the Minister is that, should we not just cancel the agreement as was accepted by Parliament as opposed to negotiating with people who have taken millions and millions of USD from our country? That was in fact accepted by Parliament.
“They have looted enough of our resources. If you compare the monies and I have not looked at your figures, but I am quite sure that the money that has gone to UNIVERN is more than what ZINARA had actually distributed to Mashonaland East, Mashonaland West, Mashonaland Central, Matabeleland North and so forth. For what – for software, I ask that we revisit UNIVERN; they have looted enough. I thank you,” said Biti.
