THE MINISTER OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS (HON. J. MOYO): Thank you Madam President. Thank you Hon. Senator for asking that question. Yes, the general legislation of all public transport is with the Ministry of Transport – so the division of intercity, including inter-rural, that is governed by the Minister of Transport. Urban transportation is required in the urban areas and in the urban areas; we have two pieces of legislation, either the Urban Councils Act or the Rural District Councils Act. In there, we are supposed to organise omnibuses to run our cities. During the de-regulation that has taken place, it had not been amended that omnibuses ought to be running urban areas and when we saw that the increase in the number of vehicles in the urban areas was causing congestion, Government then made a decision to say let us organise urban transportation so that we introduce omnibuses and this was done in 2019. When we opened up to say let us have ZUPCO, as the omnibus which was there, in order to make sure that nobody goes without a job, we asked that all those who had buses which were plying in the urban areas and those who have omnibuses which were plying in the urban areas, they now operate under the omnibus system and nobody is barred from registering with ZUPCO so that they can run their businesses as usual.
Of course, they are now strictures where we require stricter public inspection. I know the Vehicle Inspection Department is for the Ministry of Transport but because we want to run a more safer transport system, we say in addition to what they are doing in VID, CMED which is still under the Ministry of Transport should further examine to make sure that since they have engineers more than VID, those vehicles are now inspected. So, whether it is a bus or it is a kombi, they must go through these two stage examinations. What we found out in Bulawayo is more organised. They had three transportations for cooperatives that almost self-regulated and made sure that others who would cause chaos are not allowed, but this a self regulatory system that they were operating, almost a monopoly of those three.
We went and discussed with them and we said the three associations can now join ZUPCO. So, those organisations have agreed. They complained about money that it was less than their vehicle operating cost and we were able to calculate together with them and the figure that they asked, we gave them. Bulawayo seems a little bit more organised than Harare. Harare had a more chaotic situation – between us and the Ministry of Transport, we recognised that out of 12 000 kombis operating in Harare, 8 000 of them did not have papers which are correct.
That is why when we insisted, go through VID and CMED in order to join ZUPCO, a lot of them still operate outside the system but the door remains open that they go and regularise themselves and they will do business with the Omnibus here in Harare. We have gone further and said if we are going to reach upper middle income and vision 2030, we cannot reach that with unorganised urban transportation system like all other cities throughout the world that have developed. They have very well developed urban transportation system.
We had liberalised but that liberalisation has limits as the increase in the ownership of vehicles, private and before I even go to mushikashika, the congestion that you are looking at here cannot be regularised until we have proper working omnibus system. COVID-19 came and it further exacerbated the situation with chaos, with the number of people who can go into an omnibus system that is competitive and it is peaking people from every corner of the town, we just thought we needed to tighten the regulation further. That tightening was done through a Statutory Instrument under COVID-19 but we continue to appeal to our people that urban transportation needs to be regularised but anybody who has a kombi or a bus, can join so that they earn their money from their asset which they have bought using their own resources. I thank you Madam Speaker.
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