Council admits failure

charge of bus terminuses in countries such as Zambia, South Africa and Botswana. A survey of city ranks in the CBD showed no sign of municipal officials deployed as yet.
The officials are supposed to check whether the kombis are properly registered and whether they have rank discs, which allow them to use municipal loading and dropping facilities.

City management has not been forthcoming on the way forward at bus ranks with officials failing to convincingly give substantive timeframes and take over programmes.

Police intervention at the bus ranks took some of the officials by surprise as they had not anticipated the eviction of touts and marshals from the ranks.

Harare Mayor Muchadeyi Masunda, yesterday conceded the city’s failure and blamed it on some of his senior managers.
“First, amongst the senior functionaries we do not have enough results oriented self-starters with that can-and-must-do attitude.
“Second, the Harare Municipal Police has not had a substantive chief security officer during the 50 months of my tenure as mayor,” he said.

Mr Masunda accepted the blame on the city’s failure to take over the running of the terminuses.
“I must, however, take the criticism on the chin as the buck ultimately stops with me on anything and everything concerning the City of Harare,” he said.
Mr Masunda said he had instructed town clerk Dr Tendai Mahachi to recruit the chief security officer.

He said other shortcomings in the implementation of city programmes were because the city’s business and public relations units were understaffed.
“We also need to beef the business and public relations divisions with multi-skilled professionals with lots of fire in their bellies so that they bring to fruition a number of potentially lucrative public-private partnerships which are taking longer than usual to consummate,” he said.
The failure by the city is surprising given that Zanu-PF has endorsed the prevailing peace at the ranks.

The party has also warned individuals to stop using its name in the harassment of kombi operators, their crews and the public.
The touts representing a shadowy group that claimed to be aligned to Zanu-PF extorted money from operators charging US$3 for loading a kombi.

Those who refused to pay were banned and blacklisted, while others were attacked.
Police rounded up over 500 touts in the city and kombi crews say business was now being conducted peacefully.