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Ellen Chasokela Herald Reporter
The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport and Infrastructure Development on Monday came face-to-face with the Zimbabwe National Road Administration (ZINARA) ineptitude after it heard that the latter was losing $5 000 daily at Skyline tollgate in Harare South due to bickering over who is responsible for its repair, almost five months after it was burnt during the January riots.

The tollgate used to collect at least $13 000 daily before it was burnt, but is now collecting $8 000 daily.
Zinara’s acting CEO Engineer Wishes Mauwa told the committee, which visited the tollgate on Monday that revenue had declined as some motorists were driving past the tollgate without paying after the boom gates that used to control traffic were destroyed.

“There are vehicles that come in a single file especially commuter omnibuses and when one passes the other vehicles follow immediately so it’s difficult to enforce payment of all the vehicles without the booms. Tolling operations here are not very efficient because there is so much human input, you find that collections are not that efficient.

“We have motorists that are also avoiding the tollgate by using other roads in the nearby location,” he said.
On the repair of the tollgate, Mr Mauwa said there was divided opinion with its partners on whether to repair it at a cost of US$1 million or proceed with plans that were already in place to relocate the tollgate to a new location which will cost US$2 million.

“We have joint responsibilities with Southern Region Trading Company and we have assigned them some other activities and we will do the other repair work. They will take care of the hardware and the software for the system and also repair the booths because they supplied the booths. We expect that the repairs will be done by end of July.

“There are also plans to relocate this tollgate to a location after Londers turn-off since this one is too close to urban areas and has other alternative roads that drivers are now using to avoid the tollgate so that also delayed us on whether to repair this one or focus on the new one.”

Southern Region Trading Company (SRTC) representative said three days after the tollgate was vandalised they had a meeting with Zinara to discuss repairs.

“Part of that meeting looked at the costs and tasks that would be allocated between ourselves as the partner and ZINARA, our contract states that as SRTC we are in charge of the initial capital outlay and not the repair work. In the past if there were damages to the booth our team would come and repair and we have evidence and a track record.

“A budget and a plan was put in place and submitted to ZINARA for signing and no feedback was received until a certain time where we have since reconvened that same team to come and repair the tollgate based on that plan.

“Issues that were raised, were those of procurement and agreement on who would carry which cost of the plan were submitted to ZINARA so on our part we had agreed that we would be able to put in temporary structures for the booth, but we noted and raised concern that this structure is slant so there is need to reinforce the structure before any repairs can begin which is the issue we have highlighted to ZINARA,’’ she said

Chairperson of the committee, Cde Oscar Gorerino said it is disappointing to note that nothing has been done to repair the damaged tollgate.

“It’s six months down the line and there are no repairs that have been done to the tollgate and considering that it’s one of the tollgates where they collect a lot of revenue, to me it’s just an issue of lack of seriousness on the part of the department of roads and ZINARA because their partners delivered on the job they were supposed to do.

“In terms of repairs it’s the Department of Roads which is supposed to do that because ZINARA is just administering the collection of revenue so I think there is need for department of roads to attend to this incident urgently as we all saw, we had an incident that happened while we are here where a truck driver harassed a female cashier. We don’t know how many incidents like that have been happening for the past six months.

“I urge the Department of Roads to move quickly on this issue to enhance security since the money collected is not even secure and thieves can just come in and steal it. As a committee we are not happy with what is happening here,’’ he said.