CABINET is still to deliberate and approve the planned installation of urban tollgates mooted by the Transport ministry, new minister Jorum Gumbo said yesterday.
BY RICHARD CHIDZA
Gumbo said this on the sidelines of his visit to the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (Zinara)’s Call Centre in the Workington industrial area in Harare that officials described as the best public-private partnership (PPP) in terms of delivery.
Zinara acting chief executive officer Moses Juma described the centre as the heartbeat of the parastatal’s licensing, transit and tolling revenue collection offering a live monitoring system.
“This PPP arrangement, which has given rise to a world-class transport management system developed by our partners Univerm Enterprises, I can declare, is the best in the country. This development made a great difference in our revenue base which increased from $30 million a year to $140 million.
“Our tolling experience started from humble beginnings where we were collecting toll fees manually in the open and we realised this system was potholed with loopholes and difficult to audit,” Juma said.
He said such problems inspire the parastatal to team up with its partner to come up with an “innovative home-brewed computerised revenue collection system that uses solar power which makes the toll plazas world-class, clean, renewable and sustainable”.
Juma said Zinara generated at least 14 kilowatts of electricity at each toll plaza from which it uses only 50% “hence we are creating excess capacity that can be used to reduce the current power shortfall”.
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Zinara, he said, was also now able to rehabilitate up to 60% of the country’s rural road network using motorised graders allocated to all the country’s 80 administrative districts and whose work is monitored live at the Call Centre.
Zinara board chairperson Albert Mugabe dispelled rumours that the “integrated transport management infrastructure” was privately owned.
“I would want to make it clear here that even though we still owe our partners a bit of money, this is our system, this is our infrastructure. We are ready even tomorrow to roll out a pre-paid tolling system that will increase revenues into Zinara.
“With our partners Univerm, we are also ready to computerise our ports of entry for the efficient collection of road access fees which through the current manual system we believe is prejudicing us of at least 50% of the revenues we should get,” Mugabe said.
With a recent survey having shown that the majority of Zimbabweans especially in urban areas were against urban tolling, Gumbo was hesitant to commit.
“I am still new and it is not an individual decision. Cabinet will have to look into this issue and come up with a concrete decision. I am still being advised on what really is going on,” Gumbo said.
