Q &A:
*HON. CHIBAYA: Thank you very much Mr. Speaker. My question is directed to the Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, Hon. Mguni. Minister Mzembi was concerned by the issue of road blocks and that it is doing a disservice to tourism. What are you doing as a Ministry to ensure that you remove the numerous road blocks so that it will not disturb the tourism sector? I thank you.
THE DEPUTY MINISTER OF HOME AFFAIRS (HON. MGUNI): Thank you Hon. Speaker. Two weeks ago, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe chaired a meeting that resolved how to bring down road blocks. Therefore, we went down to get a plan on how to bring them down. Last week, I articulated in this Parliament correctly to say, it is not easy to balance good quality service versus compliance because we need not to loosen our security while we provide services. Therefore, we have now got a standing document that will reduce road blocks.
However, as the question was raised previously here, we need VID to come to the integration of the new system so that police can use the gadgets just to capture and quickly read and allow the vehicles to move faster than we do now. At the moment, we are compelled to do a lot of work in a road block to check the fitness of a vehicle which is the VID’s responsibility, to check whether the licences are valid which is RMT responsibility and to check whether the drivers are travelling well. If it is integrated, we can even calculate as police the time the driver left and the time the driver arrived at the road block; calculate the speed using a computer and then it will be free flow for the tourists. I thank you Mr. Speaker.
*HON. ENG. MUDZURI: Thank you Mr. Speaker.
THE TEMPORARY SPEAKER: Order, Hon. Members.
*HON. ENG. MUDZURI: My supplementary question to the Minister is with regards to the reduction of the number of road blocks. What is your policy as regards to court judgements that the police should always have a Form 265 and should not force people to pay spot fines? What have you done concerning the issue of having the Form 265 so that the people can be able to be ticketed? What are you doing to reduce this issue of spot fines in a time when people are having difficulties in having hard cash from the bank?
HON. MGUNI: There are gadgets…
THE TEPORARY SPEAKER: Hon. Minister, are you quite clear with the question?
HON. MGUNI: Yes, thank you Mr. Speaker. Presently 500 gadgets which will actually raise the invoices have been deployed into the country, into traffic stations because we will never see a manually written invoice because it is only what he is articulating that is giving us a problem. Also, we are eradicating corruption where that machine must detect the system, the offence and actually eject an invoice which is corresponding with the offence, not from a human error or a human’s mind. This is where we are shifting now.
However, if there is a system that the court says we must not do, we have also the right to go and oppose that system. Why – because we have got reasons why we want to use a system that will maintain POSA in this country. At the moment, we opposed that because we want to use a system which will control vehicles. We cannot just allow anything that is intruding to our security to be implemented. We have to balance it for the country. I thank you – [HON. MEMBERS: Inaudible interjections.]-
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