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Mr Mugabe

Herald Reporters
The Zimbabwe National Roads Administration has been accused of scuttling a $400 million deal to rehabilitate roads in Harare by refusing to guarantee a loan from a South African investor as the administrator of the roads fund.

Harare city authorities said there was nothing they could do about the state of the roads unless Zinara started cooperating.

The city council described the handling of the road fund by Zinara as “a clear disaster”.

The city officials said they had lured the investor, Neo Capital Roads of South Africa, which was willing to inject $400 million and they engaged Zinara with a view to get a guarantee of an annual disbursement of $10 million.

The city said it was going to chip in with $5 million from other related sources such as parking, billboards and trenching.

Also Read:

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• Harare receives $1,3m for roads

• Harare sabotages $250m roads deal

• Harare getting crumbs from Zinara

• $400m roads deal in limbo

According to a document titled: “Position paper on the management of road user fees” authored by city officials, Zinara refused to play ball and there is concern that the road network in the city has been deteriorating ever since the authority took over the administration of the road fund.

Zinara took over the administration of the road fund from local authorities in 2010.

“Despite numerous meetings with Zinara, and correspondences to our parent ministry (Local Government, Public Works and National Housing) and the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure Development, nothing has materialised,” said the city in the report.

“The City of Harare is of a strong view that the current scenario is untenable and the end result is deplorable state of the road network.

“It is disturbing to know Zinara is harbouring intentions to annex city parking space, yet their handling of the road fund is a clear disaster which is premised on making local authorities survive on its benevolence through donations of road equipment.

“Institutional memory is abundant to compare the state of Zimbabwe roads before Zinara took over and the aftermath. For the local authorities to fulfil their mandate, the collection of road fees and licensing needs to be with the local authorities.”

The city also argued that despite the fact that the vehicle population in Harare had more than doubled, the city continues to receive less funds from Zinara.

“At dollarisation in 2009, the City of Harare managed to collect $6,5 million,” said the city in the report. “At that time, the City of Harare had a vehicle population of 531 700.

“However, in 2010 Zinara took the responsibility of collecting vehicle licensing and made available $4 million to Harare for road maintenance.”

Zinara board chairperson Mr Albert Mugabe said in an interview that the city was wrong in accusing the authority of neglect.

“They (city council) presented an expression of interest which we accepted and requested that they furnish more details,” he said. “A deal for $400 million cannot just be signed because you wish it.

“We requested detailed verifiable statistics about their proposed revenue streams which they offered to ring-fence for the project and they never came back. When we made enquiries they took from pillar to post.”

Mr Mugabe said municipalities had been ignoring road maintenance to the extent that when they took over the road fund, the requirement was for rehabilitation.

“The roads did not deteriorate because Zinara took over, rather Zinara took over because the roads had deteriorated,” he said. “They (city council) are already collecting revenue from streams generated by the road fund, yet nothing is being channelled towards road maintenance.

“For example, parking fees and billboard advertising are revenues that rely on motorists and are, therefore, derivatives of the road. When they had licensing the road network collapsed because they used that revenue for salaries and everything else except the road.”

Zinara recently accused the city of scuttling a $250 million-loan deal that would have seen the capital city’s roads constructed, rehabilitated and maintained to world class standards.

This was after the city officials refused to handover parking revenue to Zinara.