Govt to monitor Zinara

Senior Reporter
Government has placed the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration under daily surveillance to monitor revenue collection to improve transparency.
Addressing the media in Harare after meeting management of parastatals under his ministry on Tuesday, Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Obert Mpofu said Government was also reviewing toll fees.

“These complaints have been raised by members of the public and parliamentarians and my deputy (Ms Petronella Kagonye) has addressed some of them,” he said.

“What we are going to do is to make sure that all Zinara operations will be linked to the ministry directly for us to see what is going on, on a daily basis.”

Minister Mpofu said Zinara had improved its collections following computerisation of some tollgates, although he could not readily provide figures.

“Cabinet has directed that we review toll fees and construct tollgates in areas with high concentration of vehicles like peripheries of urban areas,” he said. “We are working on measures which we think will provide viable collection points.”

The public, MPs and local authorities have complained that Zinara is not properly disbursing funds for road maintenance despite collecting millions annually.

“Most of the institutions (under his ministry) were not accountable to anybody, they were not reporting to the ministry or the permanent secretary, so we were giving them guidelines on how they should operate,” he said.

Minister Mpofu said some managers complained about political interference by board members in their operations.

Some of the parastatals that fall under the ministry are Air Zimbabwe, the National Railways of Zimbabwe, the Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe, the Meteorological Services Department, Road Motor Services, CMED, the Vehicles Inspection Department, the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe and National Handling Services.