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OAG 2018 Report for Local Authorities (Intro)

I am excited that the 2018 OAG Report on Local Authorities has finally been published. I've been waiting for it! And judging from Tweets and other write ups on various social media platforms, I wasn't the only one.

As soon as I am through with going through the reports, I will then give my independent analysis and comments thereon.

For today, I just want to comment briefly on  what I came across that depicts the excitement and speed with which we have rushed to talk about the long awaited report.

First up, a Chronicle report on the Bulawayo City Council report. The heading in a nice,big bold font spoke of a $434,450 car loan. Half a million. The report itself spoke of $34,450. Whilst this was an obvious typo, from which none of us are immune, it speaks to the quality of editing, to which all of us should be immune. The same Chronicle report also cited the Kusile RDC as contravening a section of the Urban Councils Act. Why not? RDC's are governed by the Rural District Councils Act. I will check if this is another typo or if they really did contravene a section of their own act. We were all so excited!

Open Parly commented on the Harare City Council report. The report made reference to the contravention of section 290 (even though they did not cite it). Storm in a tea cup if you ask me. Why? As was rightly said, this was from 2014 to November 2018. Previous reports during for that period have made mention of this, so the 32 million is not very new to consistent readers of these reports.

Lastly, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Info tweeted that the audit reports vindicated the country's president since he is the one who appointed the Auditor General. We tried to tell him that this was not true, but he chose not to respond to this particular correction. Why would one want to misrepresent facts in the public domain?

That's it folks. The real analysis is coming. Stay tuned.

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