City engages new firm to replace EasiHold

easy parkMunicipal Reporter
Harare City Council has engaged Park Rite Africa to replace EasiHold (Pvt) Ltd for another joint venture in the management of the parking business when it has not cleared matters with Easihold.
The business relationship between council and the South African company soured recently.

Park Rite is a joint venture between some Israelis and some Zimbabweans and has no known experience in managing on-street and off-street parking in cities.

Residents have criticised the move and suspect there could be underhand dealings and that the deal could also fail in the same manner as the one entered between the city and Easihold.

The residents said there was no logic in engaging another firm when the city had not cleared matters with EasiHold.

The deal with EasiHold, called EasiPark Harare, has irretrievably broken down, with each party accusing the other of clandestinely opening bank accounts to divert funds.

An arbitrator recently ruled that the deal should continue, but the city appealed to the High Court, resulting in EasiHold opting for an out of court settlement and discussions are going on the termination of the contract.

Harare Residents Trust director Mr Precious Shumba said the city officials involved with securing the future of Harare are driven by greed in rushing to engage another firm for the management of parking space.

“The City of Harare has not benefited much from EasiPark and there is very little to their partnership except the fact that the city has been forced to set up its own company City Parking, which has become another source of conflict in council,” he said.

“The residents are being excluded by being left out of important meetings where these decisions are being made. The HRT demands to know who in council is benefiting from these external partnerships because residents still have serious challenges realising the true value of the so-called investments.”

Mr Shumba said it was critical for council to engage stakeholders before making crucial decisions.

Harare lawyer Mr Musindo Hungwe, said the city should have waited until the contract with EasiHold was terminated.

He said the city risked having two companies offering the same services if the termination of the EasiHold contract became complicated.

“If an agreement is mutually exclusive, which would ordinarily be the case with such transactions, it would not be legally tenable to contract another part pertaining to the same subject matter of that original agreement which is still in subsistence,” he said.

Park Rite Africa is expected to supply, install, manage and maintain parking meter systems in the city.

Council’s business committee chairperson Councillor Herbert Gomba said the deal with Park Rite Africa was different in that the company would buy the equipment which is more advanced unlike EasiHold which allegedly breached an agreement by hiring equipment from a South African company.

The charges for hiring the equipment was being paid by EasiPark Harare.

Cllr Gomba said Park Rite would supply equipment which use state-of-the-art technology, including online communications with each electronic meter using GPRS and the cellphone network, online real-time reporting each transaction and world class reporting systems.

“This is a total departure from the EasiHold deal because this deal will provide a platform for effective law enforcement of parking by-laws,” he said.

“The moment a vehicle is clamped in the city it will be seen by people at head office and, therefore, it limits corruption. We now have to cancel the EasiHold deal in the courts because these people have siphoned more than US$1,3 million from the EasiPark Harare account.”

The proposed deal by Park Rite is a computerised system that manages the entire on-street and off-street parking system and also comprises of computers, software, audit reportage package and a financial writer.

It uses windows-based software for its operating system and each parking meter device is networked online in real time, making it instantaneous updating of reports and transactions.

Cllr Gomba said the city on its own could not afford the equipment, hence the courting of a partner to provide advanced technology.

He said after the impasse with EasiHold, the company which was hiring the meters to EasiPark Harare refused to update the meters hence they were not working and marshals were using receipt books.

The city accused EasiHold of assigning its rights in the joint venture to a company called Servest without disclosure to and consent by the council and in breach of the joint venture agreement. EasiHold was accused of transferring money from EasiPark Harare to fund its new parking business venture in Nigeria.

But EasiHold claimed that the city unlawfully opened an alternative bank account and diverted funds from EasiPark Harare.

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