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Trust Freddy

Herald Correspondent

Ninety-four road authorities received just over $33,8 billion from the Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) for maintenance and rehabilitation in the first half of the year.

Zinara announced the figures in a disbursement schedule published yesterday.

Publication of the disbursement schedule comes barely a week after Zinara upped its transparency and accountability systems through publication of its 2020 and 2021 audited financial statements at its 6th annual general meeting. 

Further, Zinara is working on a supplementary budget to cushion road authorities against inflationary pressures.

In an interview yesterday, Zinara chief executive, Mr Nkosinathi Ncube, said they had taken the bold stance to publish disbursements to road authorities quarterly so as to restore public confidence in the way it uses road funds.

He said the move also attested to the organisation’s commitment to subject and align itself to the tenets of good corporate governance.

“From January to 30 June 2023, we have disbursed more than $30 billion to all the road authorities that we have in this country,” said Mr Ncube.

“We are going to continue on this trajectory as we continue to strengthen our governance systems. As an organisation, we believe in transparency. 

“We urge our road authorities to timeously put their disbursements to use in order to preserve the value of the funds.”

Harare Metropolitan Province got $1,5 billion from Zinara, with Harare City Council getting just over $1,3 billion.

Despite getting reasonable amounts of money for road rehabilitation, Harare continues to have bad roads due to incompetence by opposition councillors, with the few roads that are in good shape, having been done by the Government. 

Over 55 roads in Harare have been repaired or reconstructed by the Government under the Emergency Road Rehabilitation Programme (ERRP2) after the city council failed to do the required work. Some of the major roads rehabilitated by the Government through CMED in the last two years in Harare are Boshoff Drive, Kelvin South in Graniteside, Ruwa Mushanje, Paisley, Connaught Road, Masotsha Ndlovu, Ceres and Kent.

Bulawayo Metropolitan Province has been allocated $752,4 million, Manicaland $561 million, Mashonaland Central $416,5 million, Mashonaland East $422,7 million, Mashonaland West $634,2 million, Masvingo $253 million, Matabeleland South $589,3 million, Matabeleland North $600,3 million, Midlands $773,7 million.

Mr Ncube said Zinara was committed to capacitating road authorities to use the funds with probity through continuous training workshops.

“We observed that some road authorities at times struggle to come up with interim payment certificates (IPCs) and also face some contract management issues which delay their acquittal processes.” 

“We therefore resolved to embark on continuous training programmes for our road authorities. Our last workshop was in April and we will be resuming these trainings during the third quarter and last quarter of the year,” said Mr Ncube.

Addressing the issue of revenue leakages, Mr Ncube said Zinara had adopted zero tolerance to corruption and had set up a fully-fledged risk and loss control department to prevent and deal with all forms of fraud within the organisation. 

This is over and above frequent audit spot checks at the organisation’s tolling sites to ensure staff members observe high levels of professionalism and integrity.