HON. NDUNA: Madam Speaker, the issue that I want to touch on is to both computerise the Ports Authority and I am happy that the report by the Budget Committee stipulates and directs the Minister of Transport and Infrastructural Development to expeditiously man and computerise the Ports Authority in that the issue of vehicular transport and human traffic, if it continues to be amalgamated, we continue to have a log-jam and we continue to unnecessarily incur costs, especially if you delay those heavy trucks loaded with commodities that are supposed to go into the market. A good example is if a 30 tonne fuel truck is delayed by 48 hours at the border post, the resultant effect when the truck lands to offload the commodity, the sugar, assuming it is sugar, is going to land at 4c more than it left the border post because of the delay of 48 hours and the same happens to fuel, 45c more. So we could definitely save revenue by expeditiously making sure that there is a free flow of traffic – I mean a flow that is computerised.
I therefore also call upon the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development to synergise on the systems to expeditiously have mobility of transport systems, and this issue is called Zimbabwe Integrated Transport Management System (ZIMTIS). It actually integrates CVR, VID, ZINARA and RMT. It integrates all the transport systems including the Vehicle Theft Squad (VTS) so that when police at the road block actually torches the licence plate of that vehicle it can give you a history and a plethora of issues including the amount of speed on a public service vehicle that the driver has been having one tollgate after the other.
We can utilise the infrastructure that we have in order for revenue generation and also reduce crime. So besides the Ports Authority, there is need to have ZIMTIS established not any time more than today expeditiously so that we can make sure that we reduce revenue leakages, plug revenue shortages and all that using computerisation.
Thirdly Madam Speaker, the issue of the Mines and Minerals Act that has been spoken about by the Budget Committee, how we are losing revenue through that moribund and antiquated piece of legislation of 1951, is because there is no mention of the small scale miners in that piece of legislation whereas the small scale miners are expected by year end to produce 100 tonnes of gold in order to contribute $12 billion to the mines minerals economy by year 2023. So looking forward, we will continue to have supplementary budgetary requests because there is illicit outflows of our mineral wealth.
I call upon the Minister, as the gold finger, to expeditiously allow or request the Minister of Mines to bring to this House the antiquated piece of legislation so that we can shred and include the small scale miners, artisanal miners and we continue to contribute to the fiscus in a regulated manner. Currently, they are using claims that are held for speculative purposes by large scale miners, whereas they are not observed and they are actually not given their right using the piece of legislation that is called the Mines and Minerals Act.
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