The company deserves better and the hardworking men and women at tea and macadamia plantations in Southdown Chipinge and the pome fruit plantations in Nyanga, deserve better. They have endured for years and an able board can help change the path.
I had the privilege of being invited to tour the company’s operations across the Eastern region just a month ago, and assuredly the company is on a mending path although it has been a long time coming.
The passion, the precision in execution and the knowledge exhibited by all the employees manning the farms and factories is out of this world. Even the chief executive Paul Spear is just as passionate, spending three working days every week in the fields in Chipinge and Nyanga religiously. What I saw is an unparalled quest for redemption which is clearly supported by the majority shareholder. But powers that call the shots at NSSA are playing a political game and not a business one, which is sad.
Having worked at NSSA as a trainee in the investments office under the previous administration led by Matiza, it was evident then, as it is now that the board crafts and authorizes key investment decisions without submitting same for due diligence to expert officers and mid-level investments practitioners that it employs.
In actual fact, it is these experts in investments who should craft and draft proposals for board considerations not the other way round. A closer look shows that the board on its part is often under undue pressure from the ministry to push the ministry’s own agendas which may have a negative investment payoff.
If “the new dispensation” and “open for business” are chants to be taken serious, government has to shun this Robert Mugabe way of running State-owned enterprises.
By Respect Gwenzi for The Source
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