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Business Reporter

The Zimbabwe National Road Administration (ZINARA) has introduced a happy hour congestion management promotion at selected tollgates where lucky motorists with fully licensed vehicles enjoy free passage during peak periods.

Various corporates have come on board bankrolling the promotion where they prefund the passage of the vehicles during the happy hour.

The National Building Society (NBS) was the first to partner Zinara on this promotion and several motorists enjoyed free passage at Shamva tollgate on Christmas eve.

Lucky motorists also enjoyed free passes at Eskbank and Shamva tollgates on   December 27, 2021 courtesy of the Zinara and NBS smart partnership.

Zinara spokesperson Tendai Mugabe  yesterday confirmed the promotion saying it was helping to ease congestion and providing corporates a fertile opportunity to market their products to the motoring public.

“Yes, it is a very exciting promotion with numerous advantages to the motoring public and the corporates,” said Mr Mugabe.

“Apart from helping in managing congestion, this promotion is actually working as a reward or bonus to compliant motorists who are getting a rare opportunity to pass at the tollgate free of charge.

“To the corporates who are prefunding the free passage for motorists, the promotion is affording them a perfect opportunity to interface with the motoring public at one goal and market their products.

“We are encouraging the corporates that have come on board to make use of fliers with detailed information about their products so that we don’t inconvenience the motorists.

“We are also appealing to them to ensure that their staff members have the required protective gear such as reflective jackets since they will be interfacing with the motoring public on the road and to also observe Covid-19 protocols.”

Mr Mugabe said through various interventions by Zinara, there were few cases of delays at the tollgates on Christmas day.

He said the road fund manager was working on several other exciting products and campaigns that would be operationalised in 2022 going forward to ensure that motorists were not inconvenienced at the tollgates.

Mr Mugabe said Zinara was also capaciting its ICT department to ensure that there was an optimal and reliable network at the tollgates.

“The biggest challenge that causes congestion at the tollgates is attributable to an unstable network,” he said.

“The organisation has taken a deliberate move to capacitate the ICT department to ensure that issues to do with network and connectivity challenges are addressed wholly.

“This is part of our rebranding efforts where we are building a new Zinara which is customer centric.”