City of Harare must take over from EasiPark

ensure that it is easy for shoppers and those visiting city businesses to find parking easily, and to raise money for more parkades and car parks.
The EasiPark deal between the City of Ha-rare and EasiHold of South Africa performed the first two functions superbly well.
Commuters could buy reasonably-priced parking bays in car parks and parkades on contract, and vast amounts of guarded casual street parking was released, for just US$1 an hour, for use by those visiting the city centre for shopping and business.
For the first time in more than 20 years, there was hope that those who had abandoned the city centre for suburban malls would return as the touts were forced out.
There was fairness since those who work in the city centre could buy much cheaper parking, although not on the streets.
Unfortunately the third requirement, for a flow of money into the city council’s parking account so new parkades could be built, did not happen. There have been reports that the council cannot even see the accounts.
We think the city council was right at its meeting last week to decide to terminate the deal with EasiHold, giving the required 90 days notice and accepting that arbitration would probably be required to see what could still be owed on the meters and other assets.
A partnership requires that both parties trust each other, and that necessary trust no longer exists.
We suspect that the actual terms of the original agreement were kept by EasiHold, but we also suspect that the managerial salaries paid for seconded staff were far higher than Zimbabwean norms. Some services provided by South Africans could also have cost more than equivalent services sourced in Harare.
But we do not want to see a return to the anarchy, the cheating and the thieving that we saw before EasiHold was invited in.
The city council now knows how to run a good parking business. It must keep that business, although probably under another name, perhaps CitiPark, and keep the staff and the equipment. Indeed it needs to expand the operation into the western half of the city centre.
A pool of skilled Zimbabweans has been created, and we see no problem in filling the small number of management slots that could fall vacant from supervisors.
Local management having the final say will also allow greater flexibility to meet city needs. As we have noted before there is a shortage of commuter parking near some working areas that must be met until new parkades can be built.
That is why we have suggested that some street parking in Central Avenue is allowed to be turned into contract parking and why we need to find places in the kopje area, perhaps the civic centre, where a commuter car park can be established.
Flexibility is also needed for pricing street parking. The US$1 an hour is fine in much of the eastern half of the city centre; commuters have plenty of places where they can park all day for less than US$60 a month and the people who shop and visit that half of the city centre do not begrudge the fee for available and secure street parking.
In the kopje area this is not always the case. But decent parking in the far west will allow those coming into town for car spares to find safe parking near that huge collection of spares stores, and 50c/hour parking will help those who need to visit the small specialist shops in that area brave what is otherwise a terror.
The city council can make these changes, instead of having a one-size-fits-all policy that the partnership requires. But it will need to listen to shopowners, not those who work in the city centre and who want cheap street parking right outside their offices, instead of in a car park a couple of blocks away.
In other words, terminating the deal with EasiHold should not mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater.
We need something very much like EasiPark, but we agree that this something needs to be under a very efficient manager appointed by the city council and that the operation needs total backing from the council.
So long as the council accepts this, then we concur the termination of the EasiHold deal makes sense, and that the council is justified in paying out whatever the arbiter awards for equipment installed. The cost can be written down to training the Zimbabweans in the entity.