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Prosper Ndlovu Senior Reporter
THE Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) has come up with a performance based award programme for local authorities, which will see the best run council winning up to $300 000 worth of road equipment.Speaking during the just-ended annual rural authorities’ engineers’ conference in Hwange, Zinara chief executive officer Mr Frank Chitukutuku said the awards would be done annually starting from next year and called on local authorities to start preparing for them.
“Zinara is embarking on a programme to award prizes to the best local authority as a way of enhancing improved operational efficiency. The programme will have three winners, the first, second and third, starting from next year,” said Mr Chitukutuku.
“The first prize would be $300 000 worth of road equipment, second prize would be $200 000 worth of equipment and the third prize $100 000 worth of equipment.
“The equipment will include a vehicle for the engineer and the technician. These vehicles are not for the chief executive officers and if we find it taken by the executive we will repossess it.”
Mr Chitukutuku outlined a series of conditions that local authorities were expected to satisfy in order to win the much coveted prize.
“In order to win the prize, the local authority should not have been garnished by Zimra over statutory payments during the period of assessment. The council should have made acquittals to Zinara on time as per set standards,” he said.
“There should not be known cases of abuse of funds or misappropriation as certified by internal auditors. Evidence of good quality work and value for money on projects would be considered.”
Mr Chitukutuku also said councils would be examined in terms of innovativeness and strategies towards working with private partners and use of their own money on road projects.
He said his organisation was committed to working closely with councils in improving the road infrastructure in the country and announced that Zinara was already working on procuring more equipment for councils after the motorised grader scheme.
Mr Chitukutuku said the collection of the toll fees across the country has trebled in the last few months following the computerisation of tollgates.
He said the computerisation of tollgates has also helped in screening vehicles in terms of their type, licensing and whether it was exempted from paying toll fees or not.
Exempted vehicles include Government registered, police, army, ambulances and diplomatic vehicles. Mr Chitukutuku also said the new system has helped weed out fake licence discs and helped increase the number of vehicles that are properly registered.
In 2009, the registered vehicle population was about 200 000 but the figure increased to about 500 000 after the introduction of the computerisation system in 2011.
He, however, said the figure was still far below given the increasing volume of traffic on the country’s roads. Vehicle licences are renewed per term four months, with light vehicles paying $20 while heavy vehicles pay $300.
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