Mutare Mayor Bid To Suspend Acting Town Clerk Flops

By Staff Reporter

The move by Mutare Mayor Blessing Tandi to suspend acting City Clerk hit a brick wall early this week after the majority of the councillors blocked the decision, saying the move was unprocedural aimed at settling personal differences.

Tandi is reportedly irked by the Acting Town Clerk Tinashe Mutetwa’s refusal to sign logistical papers to facilitate the interviews for a substantive Mutare City Clerk.

In a Twitter handle seen by this publication @Gurundor, Eng Mutetwa threatened to return at the helm of the Town House through his connections from DM Bhiza and Bishop Mutendi of ZCC church.

Contacted for comment, Mutare City Council spokesperson Spren Mutiwi could neither deny nor confirm this development but referred all questions to the Mayor.

Mutare Mayor Blessing Tandi on Monday presided over a special Council meeting in which the Acting Town Clerk was suspended. Asked whether the suspension was above board, Tandi downplayed the question adding that he had no bone to chew with the Acting Town Clerk but was fulfilling a Council resolution.

“First and foremost City Council is run by resolutions. As a Mayor, I oversee the implementation of the resolutions through the City Clerk.

“If the City Clerk sees it fit that the resolution is not implementable he writes a report either to me or to Council stating his reasons for not implementing a resolution. In everything I have been doing (suspending the Acting Town Clerk) I was doing it in the spirit of the resolution we had.

“I wonder when people say I suspended acting City Clerk, where is that coming from? How does one identifies if it is within the Urban Councils Act?, fumed Tandi.

Mutare City Council has been operating without a substantive Clerk following the death of Joshua Maligwa early this year.

Mutare’s previous acting clerk Dr Anthony Mutara resigned following abuse of office allegations.

Mutetwa is the acting clerk

Tandi is alleged to have deliberately left out Mutetwa in all the interviews processes and procedures and only wrote a memorandum to him (Mutetwa) on the last minutes to release funds for the interviews.

The interviews have since been postponed.