By Nelson Mapfumo Secretary General DZL workers’ Trust
My name is Nelson Mapfumo I was employed by Dairibord in April 1979 and retired in March 2013. I am the current Secretary General of the Dairibord former and current workers’ trust.
I am grateful for the courage shown by engineer Mutisi, requesting the board, stakeholders and the general public to protect our institution from becoming a family owned business.
The issues that engineer Mutisi raised with DZL are known by the workers and former workers and calls for a commission of enquiry to investigate.
Following the media publication of the appointment of Mercy Ndoro as the new Group CEO of Dairibord Zimbabwe Limited (DZL) the second wife of Anthony Mandiwanza, the outgoing GCEO. As the Secretary General of DZL and shareholder I would like to bring to your attention the following issues:-
We as the workers currently have outstanding issues concerning our pension funds, Daribord Employee Share ownership Trust and Old Mutual Demutualisation fund which we were never paid.
We have raised these issues with the Board, Management and other stakeholders to be paid the outstanding amounts to no avail.
For example, I have been requesting for my payments from DZL for the last 7 years and was only paid ZWL $2000 after serving 34 years and being a committed DZL employee.
What we know as employees is our pension funds were banked in a USA bank, BTC New York account number 04166032 (See attachment) and these funds would be moved in and out of Zimbabwe when there was need. This was done to protect our pensions from the depreciation of the Zimbabwean Dollar. We have not benefited from these funds and feel these are the funds that the outgoing GCEO Anthony Mandiwanza wants to keep and protect this ill-gotten wealth which should be our funds as DZL employees and shareholders, having his second wife take the helm of GCEO of DZL will completely close us out.
We can understand why the DZL board is not responding, DZL board members are a well rewarded board that is appointed by the GCEO, who is Anthony Mandiwanza. To prove my point, I was reliably informed that the Board Chair Josh Sachikonye is the uncle, “sekuru” of the current GCEO and the rest of the board members are related one way or the other and all of them are captured by Anthony Mandiwanza by their appointment.
It is sad to note that Mercy Ndoro, Anthony Mandiwanza second wife is the next GCEO of DZL, the truth is the current GCEO has something to hide and we know that. By replacing himself with his second wife, DZL is now a family business which is completely against corporate governance with it being a listed company. Face it, where in the world do you have a GCEO, Anthony Mandiwanza and second wife being the Group Financial Director and can anyone in their right mind believe that they are not putting their fingers in the feeding trough of DZL funds. Look by appointing his second wife he is clearly protecting his ill-gotten wealth.
The Board chairman has not bothered to respond to Engineer Mutisi’s request because he will also have his fingers burnt. To be honest DZL is now a family business with Josh Sachikonye , Sekuru and Anthony’s second wife, Mercy Ndoro as the GCEO. This clearly indicated that Anthony Mandiwanza is running Dairibord in his bed-room and sekuru, Josh Sachikonye pulling the strings in the boardroom.
The issues I am raising are in the public domain and need to be investigated, in fact they are with the ZRP serious fraud office and ZACC which my fellow employee has also reported. I have attached proof of what we raised and hope that finally we can get a response from the board’s chair and the current GCEO, Anthony Mandiwanza.
Nelson Mapfumo
Secretary General
DZL workers’ Trust
