adminLovemore Zigara Midlands Correspondent
GWERU City Council has entered into a joint venture partnership worth $1.1 million with a local company, Zemqos to roll out an automated prepaid parking system in the city. The new system will replace the erratic manual system, which has roundly been condemned by motorists in the city who accused council ofresorting to indiscriminate clamping of cars.
Acting Town Clerk, Edgar Mwedzi said Zemqos will finance the project and the local authority is in the process of drafting the final document before the roll out can begin.
“We entered into a Public Private Partnership with Zemqos after it won the tender to roll out automated pre-paid parking system. What’s going to happen is that they’ll provide the funding and will recoup their initial capital from the proceeds that would be realised thereof,” he said.
“We’re already in the process of drafting the agreements and once that’s done and signed we’ll roll out the programme and we want that to be up and running by the second quarter of this year.”
Mwedzi said the new system was expected to plug out financial leakages through corruption, which the local authority had been experiencing since the introduction of the prepaid parking system in 2012.
During a special full council meeting in April last year, councillors noted that there were many irregularities in the council’s pre-parking system some of which borders on corrupt practices in the area of pre-paid parking and clamping.
It costs a dollar to park a car for an hour in the Central Business District while the costs of clamping are $30 and $80 for towing away clamped vehicles.
Gweru introduced pre-paid parking as a way of easing congestion in the central business district while at the same time generating revenue.
Meanwhile, the Midlands capital has roped in a consultancy firm, Zimit to carry out a water audit.
This will pave way for the installation of pre-paid water meters and new technology which detects burst pipes and other forms of leakages.
Seventy percent of Gweru’s treated water is unaccounted for, a development which has been attributed to faulty meters and leakages.
Mwedzi said Zimit is already on the ground looking at water leakages and households, which are connected on council water supply but not being billed.
“We’ve engaged a consultancy firm, which will see us plugging all the water leakages and also auditing some households in the city, which are receiving water from council but are not being billed,” he said.
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