Traffic partnership bears fruit

Lovemore Meya Herald Correspondent
A five-year partnership entered into between Chitungwiza Municipality and Clyna Africa has already brought positive changes in the town in both road management and revenue inflow for the council.

Clyna Trading operations manager, Mr Obrien Rwafa said the deal had seen revenue from traffic section increasing significantly.

“Revenue from the traffic section has increased significantly, but due to a confidentiality clause in the contract, I cannot reveal the exact figures,” he said.

“What I can authoritatively say is that the project has had a serious impact on the municipality’s revenue inflows – on the positive side of course.

“We have in our small way helped in creating employment for residents and in excess of 70 percent of our employees are from this town. We have assisted in infrastructural development like bus termini,” he said.

Mr Rwafa said that the partnership was never a stroll in the park, as they faced resistance from both private motorists and commuter omnibus operators.

“Our operations have been very difficult to implement, but we remain unfazed,” he said. “When we made a decision to partner Chitungwiza Municipality in this project, we were cognisant of the challenges that come with introducing anything new.

“We are going right ahead to pursue our goal of identifying, unlocking and developing revenue streams for local authorities. As a corporate body, we are conscious to our obligation of making a contribution to Zim-Asset and partnering local authorities is our chosen path to that,” Mr Rwafa said.

“Some of the challenges we encountered include vandalism where we have lost money in replacing road signs, which are wantonly destroyed by certain elements with no regard for development. It is common occurrence that we erect a road sign in the morning and by end of day it is gone.”

He said council had lost money which should have been deployed to other critical areas of service delivery, while the general populace was exposed to accidents as most of the signs were missing.

“The other challenge we experienced had to do with unruly elements that violate road rules and try to arm- twist us by flaunting names of senior Government officials. Although this is happening regularly, we are not worried since we have a responsible Government that does not condone abuse of office or big names,” he warned.

Mr Rwafa said when they launched the project, they did not engage all stakeholders, and that resulted in some degree of resistance, which was later dealt with.

Chitungwiza Mayor Clr Phillip Mutoti said that the project had brought substantial changes in the dormitory town.

“The partnership with Clyna Trading has improved order on our roads. It has also raised cash for us which we are using to repair roads, and there is a great improvement,” he said.