eBusiness Weekly
THE last three weeks or so, have been testing for National Social Security Authority (NSSA) board chairman Robin Vela and general manager, Elizabeth Chitiga. The duo has been slapped with various allegations ranging from bad corporate governance to general failure to run the organisation well.
Our reporter, AFRICA MOYO (AM) tracked Mr ROBIN VELA (RV) last week to get his perspectives on the issue.
AM: There are several allegations circulating through email, which have attacked the way you are running the institution, together with Ms Chitiga. How do you respond to those issues?
RV: This is an anonymous email address, the source we cannot even verify and I think it’s cowardice of anyone who thinks they have conviction to put out an anonymous email with spurious, defamatory crimes.
If you believe that something has been wrongly done, why can’t you stand behind it and say, ‘I believe that this is what has been done, call me then I come and give testimony’. They can’t do that.
But because these are continuous emails, we have now engaged various authorities – local and international – to assist in identification of the source and author of this email.
Once we have that, we then determine how we go forward. We are very clear that this is somebody who is disgruntled; we are very clear this is somebody who is very bitter and it’s very personal and we are very clear about who we believe this person or persons are.
I have always understood that being a leader is not a beauty contest.
If you want to make people happy, you must go and sell ice cream, don’t be a leader. This is not a beauty contest and more importantly this is not about Robin Vela.
But the minimum expectation that I would have of any journalists is that there is verification done of both the source and the content before a publication is made, because it is detrimental. It is detrimental to the public at large, so why rush to publish, unless journalists are working in cahoots with the people circulating the emails.
Many of what you are reading, is an attempt to settle scores, it is an attempt to say ‘this guy came and restructured NSSA, they laid me off and I want to fix them; let’s tackle them through the new Minister. Now, what this does is discouraging to the many hard working employees of NSSA. We are trying to change the narrative, we have recruited a professional, experienced management team and middle management into NSSA.
People who are experienced are doing the job at NSSA. Now, when narratives like this come, they take away, not just from the Authority, but also the narrative of hope and change. It is a negative insinuation and it does nothing to assist us.
AM: Oh okay, talking about management. Critics say NSSA is top-heavy resulting in the organisation losing a lot of money to salaries. What is your comment on that?
RV: That is actually not correct. The organisation is structured into silos, if you talk about contributions, it is headed by Mr Barnabas Matongera – one person.
And as we move towards technology, we now need to move towards an efficient way of working, which means it’s less administration and more technical understanding of what is happening.
NSSA is trying to move with the time, if NSSA does not change, it would be changed by technology. NSSA needs to progress itself to a stage where it becomes more savvy. So I don’t think NSSA is top heavy in terms of its management at all.
AM: Some of the critical messages have been going to Public Service Minister Patrick Zhuwao.Have you met him since the messages started circulating?
RV: Look, I have met the minister a three times. I do not speak on behalf of the Minister, nor do I rehash conversations that I had with him. For all intents, the Minister has its own prerogatives and is fully entitled to utilise these.
What I do is things like write a letter.
So I respond factually, I respond with dossiers, I respond on each and every allegation giving, him the minutes of the meeting, giving him the management recommendation of the processes, giving him the board resolution so that everything is factually driven and not emotionally driven.
So in terms of all the allegations that have been put to us, we have responded in that way.
Let me tell you something, Under my watch, we have not lost or written off US$1 of investment. Every single investment of NSSA that has been done since 2015 is performing. I challenge anyone, inside or outside NSSA to dispute that. And I say inside because some of this information is coming from inside – from friends of the disgruntled.
Do I believe any of NSSA’s investments were wrong? No, I think every investment that we have done has been giving us value. In some instances, we have actually written back value that was written-off. Let me give you a specific example, you have heard that there is US$36 million that was lost in failed banks.
We have recovered US$10 million of the US$36 million. It has been recovered through a land deal, we did a land swap. That land was evaluated by three evaluators and is worth US$18 million. What have we done in this year alone? We have written back US$18 million. Is that a bad deal for the organisation, absolutely not? The US$10 million had gone. We have now written back that. We are still pursuing other creditors.
So I don’t believe we have made any shoddy investments. I believe all the investments we have, have performed including the money that they say we gave to Metbank. The number that they are throwing is completely incorrect.
The truth of the matter is that the board made a decision that we want to get more value of the TBs (Treasury Bills) that we hold. The TBs we had we held at banks like FBC, CBZ (and) NBS (National Building Society).
We wanted to get some more value other than the 5 percent, for custody of those TBs. So there was a fertiliser transaction which enabled the Command Agriculture to be effective. It was a US$20 million transaction. The underlying borrowers; ZFC and Windmill, those were the underlying borrowers for that US$20 million.
We didn’t give Metbank that US$20 million, we gave them US$20 million of TBs as security. All it did for us was it enabled us to ensure that we sweated our TBs more because we then brought a couple of percent more.
We still had our coupon but got a couple of percent more. In my view, that is good for the Authority.
We made money from paper that we were just holding, not taking unnecessary risk on it.
So I disagree with the notion that we entered into deals that we regret or have you done thorough audits? You know, unfortunately NSSA is a huge animal. NSSA stocks up different stakeholder ambitions and because we have so many different stakeholders; Government, employers, employees, general public, pensioners, you are not going to make every quarter happy.
But I also think that it is unfortunate to think that he who shouts the loudest is telling the truth. I would request that you talk to the employers, call the executive director of the Employers’ Confederation of Zimbabwe (Emcoz John Mufukare). He continuously calls me and says you guys are doing a great job under difficult circumstances.
AM: A great job? Tell us what you have achieved as a board.
RV: We have a board that works. Contrary to what you believe, this board has delivered.
Let me tell you what we have delivered. We have restructured management so we have professional and qualified team in place. The management makes a lot of decisions and the board approves.
There is not one transaction, from all the transactions which someone can say Robin Vela signed the cheque; I don’t do that. That is not my responsibility.
We introduced corporate governance, both at NSSA and at investee company level, and obviously that has not made us many friends.
Look at what we have done at ZB, what we have done at CBZ, what we did to CFI, what we did at RTG.
Those things don’t make you friends but they are the right things for the ultimate owners of the Authority. We collected US$181 million of Government arrears that had been outstanding for five years, seven years before I got. I collected on the basis that it is necessary for those arrears to be back in NSSA coffers so that NSSA can make them sweat.
Most importantly, we actuarially evaluated and agreed 33,3 percent in the minimum pension.
So that is a real deliverable; actuarially evaluated, sustainable increase in the minimum and we introduced biometric registration of all pensioners because we are saying only the deserving must take the pension. Why? Because the cake is not so big. So that was done.
We also introduced funeral enhancement benefit valued at US$500. That’s on top of the US$300 ground that they get. So that benefit becomes US$800 for our pensioners.
We also had a clean audit report for 2016, it’s also the most detailed financial report that you will ever see for a parastatal, where we also had an approximate profit of a US$100 million.
There is no parastatal that even comes closer. What am I trying to say? This is an authority that is working, an authority that is trying to turn itself now. There is this new talk that parastatals must work, parastatals are not delivering. But I would argue to you that NSSA is not one of those parastatals.
All other parastatals don’t make money, NSSA makes US$100 million and I think that is important. The last thing I want to say is that we are saddled with a lot of legacy issues and it is legacy issues that we spend a lot of time trying to fix and not on trying to do our own things.
AM: What are your own things that you are talking about?
RV: These are things like NBS, trying to get into housing – trying to talk to ZimAsset.
That was the initiative we wanted to drive, and we would be comfortable that we left the Authority with real, tangible assets as opposed to simply putting money into banks and other things. You know, the cash that we have given to anyone is very minimal.
When we said we had lent someone, we were taking TBs at best but cash, we have tried to invest it into equities, into properties because we wanted to do two things; we wanted to protect the capital, and we want to enhance returns on capital.
AM: Talking about these investments, the emails talk about challenges regards the Chinhoyi housing project. Tell us about this.
RV: There are no issues. The investments are continuing and there is no write-off of any of those investments, contrary to what might have been said.
NSSA has sought to invest across the country, so we have housing developments in Harare, Mutare, Gweru, Chinhoyi, Masvingo, Bulawayo, and that’s really been the narrative.
AM: Lastly, tell us what happened to former NBS managing director Mr Ken Chitando?
RV: We had a mutual separation. There was discomfort more at the NBS board level. They wanted to ensure that we had somebody who was able to navigate NBS going forward but it was a mutual separation that was agreed and he left.
At the moment we have an acting MD, Mr Lameck Danga, in place.
AM: what really transpired?
RV: Look, there was an internal audit done, I don’t want to go into the merits and specifics. But what I will say is that it was in the interests of both parties to separate. So he left about a month ago, and the separation was formalised.
AM: How much did he take home?
RV: Look there is speculation that he was paid off. Obviously there were obligations we had but there were no wild numbers made to him.
AM: Our readers want to know the little that he got?
RV: No, look; I don’t want to go into the details of what he got but it was a mutual separation.
I am always happy to answer questions. I don’t fear being directly quoted in the media like the anonymous people who are bent on tarnishing my image and that of NSSA.
