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Senior Reporter
Harare City Council’s project to move commuter omnibuses plying south-western suburbs-city routes to the holding bay along Coventry Road failed to take off yesterday as scheduled after it emerged that the city has no capacity to smoothly implement the new system. It also emerged that council was struggling to put adequate measures to ensure compliance and that the construction of the holding bay was still in progress yesterday.

The city had advertised that the commuter omnibuses would use the holding bay starting yesterday, but they were still picking up passengers from undesignated points and at Copacabana terminus, which was expected to be decongested.

The city was yet to mark dedicated lanes which will be used by commuter omnibuses to and from the holding bays. The situation was compounded by the fact that city workers are on a go-slow, protesting the late payment of their salary arrears dating back to April this year.

The city officials said the holding bay will now be open from today.

“We listened to the concerns of the parliamentarians (who toured the holding bay on Monday) who said we should address the outlook of the holding bays as well as the toilets, but tomorrow (today) we will start directing commuter omnibuses to the holding bays around 1pm ,” said the city’s director of works Engineer Philip Pfukwa.

He said yesterday was “a dry run”, but council expects the holding bays to be in full use by tomorrow.

“Commissioning is not an event, even up to next month we will be refining some aspects as we go along,” he said. “As we speak, we were actually completing the communication process.

“Tomorrow (today) we will be up and running unless other unforeseen events take place. We have completed tarring the holding bays.” The city said in a statement last week that the holding bays were supposed to be commissioned yesterday and the system to start working straight away.

But Members of the Parliamentary Committee on Local Government who toured the holding bays on Monday observed that aesthetics of the holding bays were not up to standard.

They also doubted the city’s capacity to effectively carry out the system, considering that pirate taxis are still wrecking havoc in the city centre without any action being taken.

Commuter omnibus drivers interviewed yesterday said relocating to the holding bay from Copacabana will promote picking and dropping of passengers at undesignated points as drivers seek to maximise on profits.

The drivers will be expected to drop passengers at Copacabana and then drive back to the holding bay and wait for their turn to be called in to load at the terminus.

“Driving from the city to Coventry Road without passengers is already one of the losses,” said one driver who identified himself as Mukaro.

“What is likely to happen is an increase of picking and dropping of passengers at undesignated points as drivers avoid driving to and from Coventry Road with empty sits.”