Brighton Chiseva
MASVINGO – More than 300 enumerators, mainly teachers, in Masvingo district are yet to receive monetary allowances for a training workshop they had in Mashava sometime in April before the kick-off of the population and housing census last month.
A number of them are saying their names are said to have received the allowances but with different account numbers, a development which suggest that someone could have tampered with account numbers to deprive the enumerators of their dues.
The victims who spoke to TellZim News said they are being tossed from office to office as they try to establish what really transpired.
Sources revealed that enumarators did not get even a cent but ZimStat office claim to have paid the money into the accounts that were submitted to them by the accountants so they should check with that office.
“We contacted the ZimStat officials who told us that the education accountant is the one who was recording the names of enumerators as well as their EC and account numbers so it was not their fault,” said the source.
When contacted for comment, Masvingo District Schools Inspector (DSI) Ishmael Chigaba who was the district supervisor could neither confirm nor deny the incident as he referred all questions to ZimStat officials.
“I was only supervising the enumerators at district level so I am not in a position to speak on those issues, you can contact ZimStat officials for comment,” said Chigaba.
Efforts to get a comment from ZimStat were futile as the Public Relations Officer Rolland Chiringa was not picking up his cell after several calls.
ZimStat spokesperson Mercy Chidemo was also not available for comment as her mobile was not reachable by the time of publishing.
Another supervisor at provincial level who spoke on condition of anonymity blamed ZimStat for the mishap saying they cannot blame education officials who were working under them saying they should sort out the mess as a matter of urgency.
“They are blaming an accountant here who was working on their behalf; he was employed by ZimStat so everything he did is in their hands. They should quickly solve the problem and allow people to get their allowances before they become useless due to inflation,” said the supervisor.
Another victim suggested that their predicament was a deliberate plan by corrupt officials who paid their allowances to people who didn’t work saying how would their names end up having wrong account numbers when they submitted correct information.
“This is corruption at play. How can they say my name received money with another account number when I submitted the correct details? It means someone benefited from my sweat and if they are going to rectify the mistake, the money will come after being eroded by inflation and won’t be enough to buy what I intended to when others received theirs,” said the source.
ZimStat enumerators started receiving their allowances for the ten day training workshops early this month in two batches of ZW$ 88 000 each.
The allowances in question are part of training allowances but the payment for field work is yet to be done.
It has been reported that a certain number of government workers who had initially been recruited as enumerators eventually got replaced by new people who just came from nowhere to join the census team, giving suspicions of corruption and involvement of ghost workers.
