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Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume has dismissed claims by the Zimbabwe National Administration (ZINARA) that Harare City Council (HCC) received enough funds for road maintanance and Rehabilitation last year.
ZINARA public relations and marketing manager Tendai Mugabe in a story published by The Sunday Mail on 22 January 2023 said HCC last year received enough funds for road repair and maintenance.
However, Mafume said HCC did not receive enough funds from ZINARA, and he also demanded for accountability and transparency in the utilisation of these public funds.
“The article by ZINARA published in the Sunday Mail of 22 January 2023 cannot go unchallenged. Yes they disbursed money to Road Authorities but how much did they collect throughout the 2022 fiscal year and what was it used for? We demand transparency and accountability in the utilisation of these public funds.
The Harare Mayor also added that they only receive a part of vehicle license.
“The law is very explicit and stipulate the following as road user fees : vehicle license fees, fuel levy and carbon tax. Currently, only part of the vehicle license fees is distributed to the Roads Authorities.
“In the last five years out of expectations of ± US$60 million per year, City of Harare received less than US$2,5 million per year.
“City of Harare has not received anything from fuel levy and carbon tax revenues in the past and this is another area where we are demanding our fair share of the national cake,” he said.
He went on to say, “The allocated budget for the roads rehabilitation for the City of Harare in 2022 was ZWL 958 million, and we received ZWL1,431 billion.
“If we are to be conservative enough and assume that Harare has 800 thousand registered vehicles, and the vehicle license costs USD20 per quarter for most of the private vehicles, we could rack in USD 64 million annually and this could make a huge difference in our road rehabilitation programmes.
“The ZWL1,431 billion translates to USD2,13 million using the official rate as at 31 December 2022. This amount is not enough even to do 5km of road reconstruction.
“To illustrate the sad state of affairs in the Roads sector we had a target of 40 km road rehabilitation and because of funding constraints we only managed to do 12.5km rehabilitation and in terms of routine maintenance our target was 450 km and on this one we managed to do 436km using funds from City Parking Pvt Ltd and the budget provision.
“If ZINARA funds were allocated during the first Quarter of the year, we could have done over 89km of Road Reseal, 52 km of Overlay and 20km of Road Reconstruction.
“The last disbursement made in December 2022 meant that we could only do 15 km of reseal, 8km of overlay and 3 km of Reconstruction.”
Mafume went on to call all Member of Parliament and residents to reform ZINARA’s model.
“Let me put it on record that the ZINARA model is not working, it needs a relook if as a country and as a people we are serious about addressing the challenges in the roads sector.
“The responsible authorities and the members of Parliament must take heed of the calls by local authorities and residents to reform the ZINARA model. It is not working,” he said.
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