Car scam by Zimbabwe officials irks president

Some Zimbabwe officials who drive taxpayer-funded cars are deflating their own tyres so they can buy the vehicles at lower prices, the president has said.

“My senior officers given government vehicles park them and deflate the tyres, and use the pool car to wait for time to expire so that they can acquire the vehicle quite new,” President Emmerson Mnangagwa told the annual conference of Zimbabwe’s government procurement transparency body days ago.

He paused as he delivered the lines, allowing members of the audience to laugh, the Times newspaper reports.

“If the workers discover that the boss’s car is deflated, they go and repair the wheel, and the boss silently deflates another,” he explained.

“Meanwhile, he uses a pool car because he knows at the end of three, four, five years, he will get the car in excellent condition but at book value.”