HARARE City Council yesterday warned the Zimbabwe National Road Authority (Zinara) to abort its planned takeover of vehicle parking lots and roadside advertising rights from municipalities, saying the move would leave them financially crippled.
BY staff reporter
Early this week, Zinara’s top management lobbied the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport and Infrastructure Development to be allowed to take over the business from municipalities in order to boost its revenue base and channel more resources towards rehabilitation of urban roads.
But council business committee chairperson Herbert Gomba said government was being unfair to the city and its intended actions were tantamount to stripping the municipality of an important component in potential revenue.
“They are oversimplifying facts. Bays are not occupied at the same time. He (Zinara board chairperson Albert Mugabe) thought the bays are occupied each and every hour every day,” Gomba said. “It was council decision to increase revenue, but they want to grab what we worked for like they want to strip council from addressing issues arising at national level,” Gomba said.
“We have a resolution not to accept a situation to strip council by people who look at things at national level and you are saying council does not have responsibility. It demoralises city parking workers who have been working hard to lure partners from Ghana and others,” Gomba.
Gomba said contrary to assertions that Harare was using road licence fees to pay for salaries, the money was in fact being used to refurbish roads.
This is despite the fact that most roads in Harare are in bad shape. Zinara board chairman Mugabe said : “There is need for urban councils to also come on board because they are collecting money from parking fees which comes from the roads, as well as collecting money from advertisements they put on street lights targeting motorists, but they are not investing that money on roads.”
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He said Harare alone required $400 million to fix the roads, adding with the $238 million that Zinara was investing on the roads countrywide, it meant all the money would be going towards fixing half of Harare’s road network.
“City of Harare has 7 000 parking bays and that means they can make $7 000 per hour, which is $168 000 per day.
“Actually, Zinara should become the sole collector of anything to do with roads, inclusive of parking fees and advertisings on the roads. We have to court investors. If we were to give councils the role to repair roads, it means roads will deteriorate. We are in a position to court investors,” Mugabe said.
