City of Harare mayor Jacob Mafume has accused the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (ZINARA) of allocating “crumbs” to the local authority which has made it difficult for them to repair roads in the city.
He said the local authority l has no choice but to take ZINARA to court so that it can be deconstructed and vehicle licensing be brought back to the local authorities.
Mafume said the Harare City Council is now being forced to use its own funds and City Parking funds mostly for road rehabilitation as the allocations from ZINARA are insignificant.
He said the local authority’s failure to repair and maintain roads and the attendant infrastructure began when ZINARA took over.
According to a statement posted on the City of Harare’s Facebook page, in the last five years out of expectations of plus or minus US$60 million per year, the City of Harare received less than US$2.5 million per year.
The local authority said it has not received anything from fuel levy and carbon tax revenues in the past. Mafume was quoted as saying:
To illustrate the sad state of affairs in the Roads sector we had a target of 40km of road rehabilitation but because of funding constraints we only managed to do 12.5km of rehabilitation and in terms of routine maintenance our target was 450km and on this one we managed to do 436km using funds from City Parking Pvt Ltd and the budget provision.
If ZINARA funds were allocated during the first Quarter of the year, we could have done over 89km of Road Reseal, 52km of overlay and 20km of Road Reconstruction.
The last disbursement made in December 2022 meant that we could only do 15km of reseal, 8km of overlay and 3km of reconstruction.
Mafume said it was high time responsible authorities and Members of Parliament took heed of the calls by local authorities and residents to reform the ZINARA model.