What that translates to is; a minimum of US$150 will translate to US$15 million annually going to individuals. This is not going through the system and is not benefiting the nation. We are all creatures of the Constitution and we are supposed to come here according to Section 117 – to make laws for the good order and just governance of man. We are supposed to be a Government by the people, with the people and for the people. If we continue to turn a blind eye to such issues, we certainly continue to let down our people.
The other third issue that I want to allude to is that we need to integrate all systems so that one system in the Ministry can police the other. There are more than 13 parastatals that fall under the Ministry of Transport. If they are disintegrated in their modus operandi, we are certainly fooling ourselves. We are pulling wool over ourselves. As a Committee, we asked the Minister the other time to come and make a Ministerial Statement here regarding insurance and third party insurance to which he acceded to. I applaud him for coming here to come and tell this august House that between 2009 and 2016, they only received US$264 000 from the remittance of 12,5% on third party insurance.
A report is coming to this House but because of this report, I can tell you that before the year is out from May 2016 to date; what has been attributed to the Traffic Safety Council and to the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development in general is about US$10 million. What has gotten to the Minister of Finance and Economic Development is about US$5 million. There is nothing that speaks greater in terms of financial accountability than systems speaking one to another and systems being computerised and integrated in particular, in the transport management system because I have said it; that this is a multi-billion dollar industry. If we continue to turn a blind eye, we are shooting ourselves and the nation in the foot.
The past few days have not been very good for the country in that we saw 43 people perish in a bus accident at Makuti near Karoi. Just yesterday, at Dema Growth Point, about eight people perished in a commuter omnibus. I will tell you where my heart lies in terms of financial accountability. There is money which is paid – minimum US$400 for every public service vehicle which has a minimum of about 15 seater. This money is paid towards insurance. This money is for the bereaved in terms of compassionate compensation. They are supposed to get US$2 000-3 000. If they are injured, they are injured, they are supposed to get nothing less than US$1 000. What we have seen in the Lion King bus where 43 people perished, we saw Insurance Council of Zimbabwe rise to the fore to say that they had insured that bus and they have paid an amount that is equivalent to about US$2 000 towards the bereaved families. This is the sort of scenario we would want to occur even at Dema Growth Point accident but alas, this cannot occur like that because that passenger insurance is not yet computerised. So, the unsuspecting innocent citizens are going to die for free whilst monies are being received by phony, fraudulent and fakesters because of lack of computerisation.
Continued next page
(152 VIEWS)
