ZUPCO revival moves a gear up

THE Zimbabwe United Passenger Company (ZUPCO) has embarked on a recruitment drive in the wake of a fresh Government bid to revive the parastatal.

The staffing programme comes amid high public expectations and confidence that ZUPCO is the panacea to the reintroduction of a mass public transport system.

Last week, the company advertised several vacant positions including bus conductors, cashiers, analysis clerks, automobile electricians, workshop foremen and artisan-motor mechanics/diesel plant fitters.

In an interview with The Sunday Mail ZUPCO acting chief executive officer Mr Evaristo Madangwa said the staff recruitment exercise was geared at reviving the parastatal’s operations.

“This recruitment is the first step in reviving our operations and increasing supporting staff to the manpower levels which were not in place,” he said.

“The advertised positions are meant to take care of the equipment and other operations to make sure we achieve our targeted goals.

“The capacity building depends on the number of buses available, as we get more buses, we keep recruiting to increase our supporting staff.”

Mr Madangwa added, “The reason why we are saying we need conductors, cashiers, clerks and other staff is because we have identified some gaps which need to be filled immediately.”

The parastatal last month partnered public transporters and introduced conventional buses after a wave of increase in transport fares by private commuter omnibus operators.

The operators were charging between $2 and $5 a trip from Harare Central Business District to most residential suburbs.

However, the coming in of the conventional buses have brought relief to the commuters who are now paying between $1 and $2 per trip.

“We are moving to other areas like Kwekwe, Bindura and Chinhoyi and we are also planning to revive long distance routes,” he said.

Mr Madangwa said ZUPCO-private transporters partnership had rolled out more than 237 buses in five major cities.

“We have 145 buses in Harare, 32 in Mutare, 40 in Bulawayo where we are still building capacity to reach 77 buses,” he said.

“In Masvingo and Gweru we have 10 buses each and we expect the numbers to increase with time.” Belarus has committed to supply Zimbabwe with 500 buses, a move that will further boost the public transport system revival efforts.

Plans are also afoot to introduce minibuses to compliment the conventional buses.