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Tendai Mugabe Harare Bureau
More than 500,000 vehicles on the country’s roads are not registered and their owners risk losing them to the government if they are not registered by December, Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Obert Mpofu said yesterday. Most of the unregistered vehicles are those that were distributed to various government departments by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe during the farm mechanisation programme around 2006.
Zimbabwe has an estimated 1,2 million vehicles according to the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration statistics. Speaking on the sidelines of a tour of Airport Road, which is being constructed by Zinara in Harare yesterday, Minister Mpofu said parliamentarians also constituted a significant number of motorists with unregistered vehicles.
Minister Mpofu said although motorists were cooperating, more vehicles were not yet in the system. “We feel the number of people using unlicensed vehicles in the country is in excess of 500,000,” he said. “The (registration) response has been good, but we feel there are still more vehicles that haven’t been licensed and we continue to appeal to the public to assist us and even yesterday in Cabinet I appealed to colleagues to sensitise their departments to have their vehicles registered.
“Most of the vehicles that are affected by this issue are those that were issued by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and others that were issued to Members of Parliament. Some have come, but we still have a sizeable number that haven’t come forward to have their vehicles registered.
“It creates a problem when unregistered vehicles are involved in accidents because accident victims can’t be compensated as the vehicles aren’t insured. “We want by the end of this year to have all vehicles licensed. “The next step will be perhaps confiscation of those vehicles but we haven’t reached that stage.”
Commenting on the construction of the Airport Road, Minister Mpofu said the September 21 completion deadline should be met after which the road will be launched by President Mugabe. He said there had been a lot of excuses for the delays but the government was running out of patience.
“I’m going to the Politburo to try and assure them that it will be done hopefully by the targeted time so that it’s launched,” he said.
Online Reporter