Fresh calls for Govt to take over city roads

STAFF REPORTER

Harare residents have urged the government to take over the rehabilitation and maintenance of roads in the city saying the responsible authorities have dismally failed to account for road funds and to deliver on their mandate.

The call by residents comes in the wake of reports by Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (Zinara) that the City of Harare failed to utilise more than ZWL$1.1bn which was part of its allocation in 2021.

In a statement on Tuesday, Zinara CEO Nkosinathi Ncube said City of Harare’s total allocation for 2021 was ZWL1.3bn but the council only requested for ZWL$154m which it failed to acquit.

Most roads in the capital are now pothole infested with the council not showing any seriousness to attend to them.

Instead of attending to the roads, the council is trading barbs with Zinara on the funding modality of the city roads.

Residents who spoke to this publication said the government should step in.

“Government should just intervene on the issue of roads. The roads are no longer trafficable and we are incurring unbearable costs repairing our vehicles all the time. What we want is service delivery and not political grandstanding,” said Glen View resident Maxwell Matemba.

A Kuwadzana resident Ruth Mukaro challenged the City of Harare to account for the funds disbursed to them by Zinara.

“We appreciate that the funds for road rehabilitation and maintenance may not be enough, but it will be good for the council to account for the little they received from Zinara for road maintenance,” she said.

George Marisa of Tynwald said: “We are fed up with political gimmicks being played by the council at the expense of service delivery. Government should just take over the roads and budgets of the councils and do the roads in the city the same they are doing with the Emergency Road Rehabilitation 2 (ERRP2).

Zinara said the biggest challenge with the city of Harare was non acquittal of funds.

In terms of the Roads Act, a road authority can only access a new disbursement after acquitting the previous funds disbursed to it.

Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume stirred the hornet nest recently when he accused Zinara for allegedly failing to disburse adequate funds for roads rehabilitation with Harare saying the organisation’s disbursement policy was a “formula from hell.”

Harare has argued on the need to have the local authority in charge of vehicle licensing insisting what they were receiving from the roads authority was insignificant.

“Zinara has only disbursed 10%. Firstly, Zinara has a formula from hell to disburse money,” Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume said. “It is a concoction of bone throwing mathematics that they are using,” he added.

“We have over 1 million vehicles registered in Harare and we expect that if those cars were paying in US dollars per quarter, that is US$30m so we expect ZINARA to just take an administration fee and remit the US$29m back to Harare.”