By Staff Reporter

The ZCTU has demanded that President Emmerson Mnangagwa takes decisive action to curb corruption at the National Social Security Authority blaming his government of laxity in curbing the rot at the institution.

In a statement following the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission’s (ZACC) investigations of corruption complaints at NSSA, ZCTU Acting Secretary General Runesu Dzimiri said the President must intervene to stop the rot at NSSA if government was serious in stemming out perennial corruption at the institution and improvement of pensioners’ welfare.  Dzimiri said corruption had become endemic at NSSA and called for lasting solutions to the vice. He called for an independent body to investigate the corruption arguing that the ministry of labour and the current NSSA board were compromised.

“For too long there have been reports of looting of funds at NSSA and this has been left unattended….While we have no qualms with the investigations, it is our considered view that the ministry is compromised and cannot be part and parcel of the investigations as it oversees the operations of NSSA. More so, it would have been prudent to dissolve the board and allow unfettered investigations into the goings on in NSSA,” read the statement.

The ZCTU said it believed that the rot at NSSA was now beyond the powers of the board and the General Manager.

“There might be other powerful political forces running NSSA affairs besides the board and General Manager,” said ZCTU.

The labour body has called for the realignment of NSSA priorities to focus on improving social security accusing it of neglecting this critical role.  

“NSSA should be playing a critical role in mobilising savings not only for payment of social security, but also for the economic development of Zimbabwe. However, over the years we have noticed with concern NSSA taking a bigger slant towards infrastructural investment than the payment of social benefits. It has heavily invested in real estate and today NSSA is arguably playing the role of a development bank more than a social security institution. In the process, however, some of the investments have been nugatory resulting in the loss of millions of workers and employers’ money.

Over the years, NSSA has been making losses as money was being thrown all around, with reports of billions of dollars lost through in questionable investments in loss making companies, sinking banks and some failed parastatals.

While bearing in mind reservations by some workers on the operations of NSSA, the ZCTU nevertheless believes that NSSA is still an important institution for the working people and the development of Zimbabwe’s economy. NSSA can play that role only if it extracts itself from the current murky way of doing things,” reads the statement.