Reprieve for motorists in arrears
THE Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) has given a reprieve to motorists with arrears through a 30-day vehicle licensing promotion this month where all penalties will be suspended.
In an interview, Zinara public relations and marketing manager Mr Tendai Mugabe, said this was part of their Zimbabwe International Trade Fair exhibition promotion.
Although the ZITF has been postponed to August, Mr Mugabe said they were going ahead with the promotion as scheduled.
He said it had become a tradition for Zinara to run the promotion but this year they chose to run it for the entire ZITF month which was initially pencilled for July.
Mr Mugabe urged motorists with arrears to take advantage of this window period to regularise their vehicle license discs.
“Yes, we are running a month- long promotion where we are suspending penalties on motorists with arrears,” said Mr Mugabe.
“This is part of the ZITF exhibition promotion which we normally do every year but this time we resolved to do it differently. We considered several issues largely brought about by Covid-19 where most people may fail to visit our stand during the ZITF. So, to give everyone an opportunity to benefit from this promotion, we resolved that it should run for the whole month.”
Said Mr Mugabe: “We are also cognisant of the travel restrictions imposed by Government to control the spread of Covid-19, so we have decentralised the promotion to all our offices countrywide and automated licensing machines found in selected supermarkets, refuelling stations and selected tollgates. As we approached the ZITF month, we have been inundated with calls from members of the public inquiring about this promotion, so we think that this is the opportune time for them to regularise their cars and comply with the provisions of the law.”
Mr Mugabe paid tribute to all compliant motorists saying their payments were contributing positively towards the refurbishment of the country’s road network.
“We have the Emergency Road Rehabilitation Programme2 launched by President, Mnangagwa that we are funding together with Treasury,” said Mr Mugabe.
“As Zinara, we salute all motorists who are paying their vehicle licenses because this has enabled us to make timely disbursements to road authorities. We are also appealing to road authorities to expedite their acquittal processes to accelerate the refurbishment of our road network. Most of our roads are in bad shape following the heavy rains that we received during the last cropping season, and they require urgent attention.”
Under ERRP2, Zinara as the road fund manager was tasked to raise US$400 million together with Treasury to refurbish the country’s road network.
Since the beginning of this year, Zinara has so far disbursed more than $2 billion to various road authorities for road refurbishment and this year Government is targeting to rehabilitate and reconstruct 840km and to re-gravel 8 340km.
About 17 093km of road network are set to re-graded while 1 290km will be resealed.