By Staff ReporterZAKA – A heated full council meeting recently exposed deep divisions between management and councillors at Zaka Rural District Council, after management refused to renew the contract of a private security company tasked with collecting bus levies, citing a 33 percent revenue drop and suspected corruption.Wise Logic Security, which was engaged in 2024 to collect levies at the council rank and other designated points, saw its contract expire on March 31. Management pushed for non-renewal, arguing that daily collections had slumped from approximately US$750 to US$500, a decline sources within management said could be attributed to corrupt activities by the company.However, councillors led by Council Chairperson Fungai Maregedze objected strongly, demanding that the contract be extended. Sources within management alleged that some councillors and the chairperson were being bribed by the company to lobby for its continued stay.‘Management was of the view that there was no need to continue getting services from the security company worse that it was recording less than it used to do,” said the source.Contacted for comment, Wise Logic Security Operations Manager Raphael Mandiya dismissed the allegations as false, saying the opposite was true.“They are lying. We never collected below the target and wehad a very good working relationshipwith the council and other stakeholders,” Mandiya said.He explained that the company had agreed to remit at least US$15,000 per month to council and claimed it never failed to hit that target, sometimes surpassing it significantly.“In the first months we reached the target or slightly above, but that was before we established our systems. We ended up collecting around US$20,000, and in December we collected around US$22,000. We worked well with council until they terminated the contract on March 31,” said Mandiya.Mandiya also refuted allegations of any improper relationship with councillors.“We do not know any councillor in Zaka. We only had an interaction with the councillors when we got the tender and that was that,” he said.Acting Chief Executive Officer Machemedze refused to comment on the matter sayin the council chair is the official spokesperson.“The spokesperson of council is the council chair. When you see CEOs commenting, they would have gotten permission from the council chair, especially issues to do with full council meetings,” Machemedze said.However, Council Chairperson Fungai Maregedze was not available for comment as both her mobile lines were unreachable by the time of writing.Sources told TellZim that the District Development Coordinator (DDC) addressed the full council, arguing that the matter was a management issue, not a policy issue, and therefore councilors should have deferred to management’s decision.Contacted for comment over the same matter, the DDC Nyaradzo Tongofa, just like here predecessor Memory Dhliwayo, refused to comment saying they were not allowed to speak to the media.“I cannot comment to the medi unless it’s a public gathering and you just quote what I would have said in publicly. Council has its own communications channels, you can follow that,” said Tongofa.Asked if it was only Zaka DDCs who were not allowed to speak to the media, Tongofa said that was the policy and anyone who commented to the press was confident that he or she could stand when questioned by authorities.“We have the communications department in our ministry, they are the ones who are allowed to comment, if there are others who are speaking to the press then they are confident that they will be answerable whne the authorities question them,” she said.Another source revealed that the head office had previously questioned why the council would pay external service providers for revenue collection while municipal police officers could perform the same task at a lower cost.The standoff over Wise Logic Security is the latest in a series of clashes between the council chair and management, a development many observers say is hindering development in the district.Recently, one official, Tongofa, was quoted saying the relationship between the council chair and the CEO was improving, with tripartite meetings now including the CEO, the DDC, and the chair herself.
