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road agency’s human resources and administration manager Mr Precious Murove said that the move was aimed at strengthening the capacity of local authorities to maintain the country’s roads.
“Instead of disbursing funds this year, our major focus is on disbursing equipment,” he said.
“The annual disbursements alone to councils are not enough and whatever revenue we disburse to councils is not translating into anything significant and meaningful on the ground.”
He said a huge chunk of funds distributed to councils was spent on hiring of equipment leaving road authorities with little or nothing to purchase other materials for road maintenance.
“Zinara wants to re-capacitate road authorities by acquiring road construction and maintenance of equipment.”
Zinara disbursed a total of US$27 million last year.
The authority has acquired 40 state-of-the-art graders to be distributed to rural councils for maintenance of gravel roads ahead of the harmonised elections.
The first batch of 40 graders was expected to be delivered to Zinara at the end of this month, Mr Murove said.
“All councils will benefit from disbursement of graders. I may not be able to tell the distribution matrix or which council will receive first, but I can confirm that every road authority will benefit,” he said.
Zinara uses the levies it collects from road users to buy the equipment. These include fuel levy, transit fees, vehicle licence fees and overload fees.
Mr Murove said tremendous progress had been made to rehabilitate the 820km Plumtree-Mutare highway.
“The project is at 69 percent completion and we have so far resealed about 200km,” he said.
The US$207 million project is being implemented by a joint venture company – Infralink, run by Zinara and Group 5 of South Africa.
Zinara commissioned the first state-of-the-art toll plaza at Ntabazinduna near Bulawayo last month.
Mr Murove said construction of nine other toll plazas was at different stages along the Pumtree-Mutare highway.
Online Reporter