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Nqobile Tshili, Chronicle Correspondent
FORTY percent of the 800 000 registered vehicle owners in the country are not paying for Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (Zinara) licences, a development which is affecting road rehabilitation programmes.
In an interview at Zinara’s Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) stand yesterday, the road authourity’s director of operations, Mr Precious Murove, urged motorists to pay their licences to help fund road maintenance works.
“In the country, according to our database, we have about 800 000 vehicles and 60 percent of that figure are compliant with the law and 40 percent are non-compliant. This is a strategy to ensure that the motoring public are in compliance with the law,” said Mr Murove.
“The issue is to do with compliance, the revenue base that we collect as Zinara is not adequate to make sure that we complete maintenance and rehabilitation of our road infrastructure. More money is needed to be channelled for road rehabilitation and road maintenance.”
He said for the duration of the ZITF, which ends tomorrow, motorists would be exempted from paying Zinara penalties as a way of encouraging them to be up to date.
Mr Murove said Zinara was also monitoring local authorities to ensure that they do not abuse funds allocated to them for road maintenance.
He said they were worried that most local authorities were resorting to hiring expensive road maintenance equipment.
“The councils are doing their best but it is our view that the resources that we are giving them should be ploughed into the roads. But there are challenges, challenges to do with equipment. There is a need to recapitalise the road authorities to make sure that the hiring of equipment is reduced. The equipment hiring is too expensive. If road authorities are equipped with equipment we will have reduced hiring rates and more money will be channelled towards rehabilitation of roads,” said Mr Murove.
— @nqotshili
Online Reporter