Manyenyeni raps Zinara

Innocent Ruwende Municipal Reporter
Harare Mayor Councillor Bernard Manyenyeni has lashed out at Zinara for allocating the city meagre resources for road maintenance, saying Harare was leaving the job to the roads authority.

“Zinara, as Harare City Council, we expect between $40 million and $70 million per year from Harare car licence fees from you, but you only give us average $1 million per year? So, you fix the potholes. This is your baby. Council is out of it”

“Harare motorists — brace yourselves for high risk driving. Potholes are popping up (excuse the sarcasm) everywhere.

“No road is safe above 60km per hour, certainly in Harare and quite likely countrywide,” he said on a post on his Facebook page.

Clr Manyenyeni said the $1 million was always in kind as council did not know “how incorrectly priced the in-kind inputs might be”.

Last month, Government said it would engage local authorities and Zinara to come up with an acceptable way of allocating financial resources to councils to enable them to carry out road rehabilitation programmes.

Local authorities accuse Zinara of giving them little resources, leading to the deplorable state of the road network in most towns and cities.

They have called for a change in policy to enable local authorities to collect licence fees in order to fulfil their mandates or alternatively for the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development to allocate financial resources in accordance with the number of vehicles residing in an area.

Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Minister Cde Saviour Kasukuwere said he would summon mayors to get their side of the story.

“We have to look at it and have discussions with the city mayors around that matter by getting a position from them.

“We will then see how best we can find a middle of the road approach between local authorities and Zinara,” he said.

The city says in 2009 it anticipated a disbursement of $7 million, but was only given $654 000 and in 2010 the city got $44 042 against a requirement of $10 million.

In 2012 the city anticipated $11,8 million, but was given $2 million and a Jet Patcher while in 2013 the city got another Jet Patcher and $550 000 against a requirement of $23 million.

Zinara collects licence fees from more than 575 000 vehicles in its database and can collect more than $40 million through the selling of licence discs.