Government liberalises fuel imports

She said for Harare the programme would incorporate aspects such as completion of the Airport Road and the FlyOver towards Enterprise Road and construction of ring roads and Fly-Overs around Harare to decongest and bring sanity in the Central Business District (CBD).

Installation of an electonic traffic management system consistent with the smart city concept, she said, should also done under the programme.

Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Minister July Moyo said the Zupco system was progressing well in all urban areas.

“We have been able to cover our vehicle operation costs and that is important,” he said.

“The hiring of those vehicles is like your capital expenditure that we have not been able to cover right now. So there is an element of subsidy that we are doing but we are happy that the operations can cover fuel and salaries. We think we can create a viable system in urban areas. We are fine tuning because in some areas we put too many buses and we are downsizing. In some areas like Harare we had to increase the number of buses because the commuter omnibuses were having difficulties in accessing fuel.” He said Government was paying each bus $700 per day. “We charged a flat rate of $700 RTGS per day,” said Minister Moyo.

“We expected at that time that each bus will run nine trips but those have not been achieved because of congestion. So the subsidy in the first month was larger than normal but we think that in the next month it is going to be lower. We are now fine tuning with the bus owners for us to pay for a bus that has done work.”