HARARE City Council has defended its decision to contract its vehicle parking business to a company with Israeli links, Park Rite Africa, saying the company had an office in the city and pledged to bring state-of-the-art machinery that would help curb cash leakages.
BY MOSES MATENGA STAFF REPORTER
Council’s business committee chairperson Herbert Gomba told NewsDay yesterday that the city stood to benefit immensely from the deal and dismissed allegations that tender procedures had been flouted.
Gomba’s remarks were in reaction to residents’ claims that councillors and officials were awarding tenders to foreign companies in return for kickbacks.
“Our workers on the ground use manually-produced parking meter tickets because the Easipark technology expired.
“The system is not foolproof enough to prevent errors, but this (Park Rite) deal will give us a total package and it reflects to head office when one parks, but fails to pay,” Gomba said.
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“If you pass through a red robot for example, it will reflect to head office and police will be made to act, that is how good the system is.
“Our workers use one receipt for at least three cars meaning from the $3 they collect, they pocket $2 and give the city $1 meaning we are losing a lot of money.”
Gomba said the local authority might rake in more than $300 000 in royalties if other cities in the region and locally decided to engage Park Rite Africa for their parking business.
“The beauty of the deal is that it emanates from Harare and if Park Rite is engaged by Polokwane (South Africa), Lusaka (Zambia) or Luanda (Angola), we get royalties because we are the nerve centre of the technology so we get at least $300 000 from royalties out of Zimbabwe,” he explained.