Council under fire over failure to man ranks

manage its assets.
The organisations want the city to erect boom gates at all ranks and to deploy their personnel to collect revenue at the ranks.
Various departmental heads with a stake in the management of the bus terminuses are yet to meet to agree on the modalities of deploying staff.

Municipal police and traffic enforcement officers report to town clerk Dr Tendai Mahachi, while the revenue officers report to city treasurer Mr Misheck Mubvumbi.
The engineering department, which is supposed to erect boom gates and ancillary structures at the bus terminus, is headed by Eng Philip Pfukwa.
The urban planning services, which plans the use of the ranks is headed by Mr Psychology Chiwanga.

The heads accuse each other of playing “cat and mouse games”.
Issues came to a head yesterday when the Urban Commuter Operators Organisation of Zimbabwe chairman, Mr Aaron Tapfuma, questioned the city’s sincerity in taking over the management of the ranks.

He was speaking at Town House during a 2013 consultative budget meeting.
He was not happy that on the city’s list of priorities for 2013 the issue of bus ranks was not mentioned.
The city has not included any financial projections from the bus ranks.

Mr Tapfuma told city officials that they were losing a lot of money through their failure to manage bus ranks.
“There is a lot of revenue that is slipping through your fingers. We have more than 5 000 kombis in Harare but only a tenth have paid for their rank discs,” he said.
He said city officials should take heed and co-operate with the kombi owners and their associations to derive the best results.

“Engage us. We are not happy that you have failed to take over control of the ranks. The police created the space for you. We as operators want to help you. We want them to man the ranks. We also want them to collect their rank discs so that they can plough back that money into the development of the ranks,” he said.

Operators not displaying the requisite documents should be fined.
But Mr Mubvumbi could only promise that the city would take action.

“We are trying to put something in place to bring sanity,” he said.
He said the municipal police department was incapacitated because it did not have arresting powers.
But the municipal police are seen daily in running battles with illegal vendors, which dismisses the argument of arresting powers.