Allegations that Helcraw Electricals supplied defective electricity meters were “cooked” in a bid to elbow the company out of the project, the firm’s managing director, Farai Jere, told a magistrate yesterday when giving evidence to support his application for bail on fraud charges.

He is being charged alongside two Zesa engineers over the supply of electricity meters and related equipment worth US$3 566 878 by his company, with the State alleging that he falsified documents to win the contract.

Jere, in his bail application, told Harare magistrate Mr Lazini Ncube that accusations against him stemmed from other companies and individuals that want to take over the meter supply project, which he said was past the pilot stage and now ready for roll out.

He was being led by defence lawyer Mr Tafara Hove when he took the witness stand to testify during his bail application.

Jere denied defrauding Zesa, saying the factory which the State alleges does not exist, is situated in the United Kingdom and he visited it along with Zesa management.

He is jointly charged for fraud with suspended Zesa engineers Leonard Chisina and Freeman Kuziva.

Jere said after the contract was awarded, Zesa was given an option to go to India or the UK where the meters were manufactured.

“During that time, engineers Chuma and Shereni were the ones involved in the project, including testing of the meters,” he said.

“We then went to the UK and we wrote a letter to ZETDC for names of officials that we needed to travel to the UK with and they gave us four names”.

Jere said Zesa decided to pay his company for the supplied meters after being satisfied with the quality of the products.

“On the contract, we were supposed to install 500 meters in each of the regions, which we did, and ended up installing 600 to their satisfaction,” he said.

Jere said Zesa had previous dealings with Secure Meters since in 2013, it supplied state-of-the-art statistical metering worth US$8,5 million and they are still functioning.

He said he was surprised to receive a complaint from Zesa saying the meters were not functioning according to their expectations two years after their supply since these meters had already passed their defect-liability period.-The Herald