Editorial Comment: Tighten screws on stolen, improperly registered vehicles

other half thus carrying forgeries.
So Zinara believes it can double the income it is receiving from licensing fees simply by making it harder to forge a disc.
We doubt that this is the case.
The error Zinara is falling into is assuming that all vehicles listed on the Central Vehicle Registry do in fact exist and that all are on the road. This assumption is not correct. There are thousands of stripped vehicle shells abandoned in the bush, shoved into quarries or just left on the side of the road; these are almost all still registered, even though the owners should have notified the central registry that they no longer exist.
Besides these shells, there are thousands more vehicles that have reached the end of their life and are just rotting at the back of houses, and even police camps.
They will never return to the roads and it can be safely assumed that they are not licensed, and never again will be licensed, although technically they are still on the central register and should carry that off-road licence, although most owners do not bother or care.
It is possible for Zinara, or anyone else, to make a rough estimate of the actual national fleet thanks to the new number-plate system introduced just over a decade ago.
It appears that plates starting with ACN are now being issued. Simple arithmetic shows that there are 260 000 possible sets of plates with the first two letters AA, and another 260 000 with the AB prefix. Assuming all ACN plates are now issued that gives another 140 000. So there are no more than 660 000 standard sets of new plates ever issued.
To that total can be added a few thousand personalised plates and some diplomatic plates. But far more importantly tens of thousands of numbers can be removed from the list since the old plates are scrapped every time a car is sold.
The CVR can, almost certainly, tell Zinara just how many vehicles there are with the new system of plates. But we would be surprised if the total was more than 500 000, and it is probably a lot less.
And that total is the absolute maximum of cars that can be licensed for use of the road.
The police have done a first-class job of forcing owners of vehicles with the old numbering system to go through the motions of changing to the new system, and they make life very difficult for those without any plates at all.
So there are only a few cars that are on the road yet do not have new plates.
Zinara tells us that 400 000 vehicles are licensed. Clearly there are some that are on the road but are not licensed, but the total must be in the thousands, not the hundreds of thousands that Zinara is using in its calculations.
Zinara has tracked down one large block of these cars, Zimbabwean-registered vehicles in South Africa. But there are not many and most will carry false licence discs because their owners cannot easily buy proper ones, not because they want to cheat.
Zinara needs to make it easy for these owners to buy proper discs, perhaps by stationing staff at the consulates in Johannesburg and Cape Town or offering postal renewal or some combination of this.
The new discs, which police at road blocks do inspect closely, are hard to forge with that metallic logo on them. And in any case they are cheap, just US$20 for a car or pick-up.
Very few drivers who can buy a real disc are likely to go to all the bother of buying or making a forgery, meaning any forged discs are on stolen cars or cars whose owners have other legal issues.
So Zinara’s efforts to list all licensed cars through its new system of tying each disc to a data-base entry is a good idea. But the value lies in making it nearly impossible to drive a stolen car or one with dubious documentation on Zimbabwean roads.
The new system is unlikely to add much in the way of revenue, simply because the number of legally-owned vehicles on the road is a lot less than the CVR total.
We think that there is need for a more accurate total of road-worthy vehicles, and at some stage the CVR will have to think of a way of deregistering cars that clearly no longer exist.
It might also be a help if the CVR and Zinara could work out a simple way for a car owner to deregister a car; at one time this could be done by tearing off the back of the registration book, sticking on a stamp and sending it in.
In any case, so long as the police continue to assist Zinara by stopping cars without valid licence discs, and Zinara could perhaps help             by having temporary inspectors going round          all car parks and checking cars parked on streets, it should be possible by the end of June for Zinara, and the CVR, to have a far better idea of just how many cars are actually on Zimbabwean roads.
Then Zinara could redo its budgets and estimates on a more factual basis.