Financial Assistance To ZUPCO And Private Transport Operators
HON. BAJILA: Good afternoon Madam Speaker. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to add my voice on this motion. I want to thank other Hon. Members who have contributed ahead of me, in particular, Hon. Mashonganyika and Hon. Chikwinya for bringing this motion before the House.
I seek to attend to the question that appears on the motion around the issue of financial assistance to ZUPCO, around the issue of a law enforcement agencies intensifying their work on making sure that our roads are user friendly. I also intend to attend to the issue of the revival of the National Railways of Zimbabwe.
Madam Speaker, in 2005 this House passed the ZUPCO Debt Assumption Act. The ZUPCO Debt Assumption Act was a law passed by this House to cause Government to assume a debt that ZUPCO was having with the Metropolitan Bank. In 2002, Madam Speaker, ZUPCO had taken ZWL 41 billion loan from the Metropolitan Bank and by 2005 it was clear that ZUPCO was incapable of clearing that debt. The ZUPCO Debt Assumption Act came to this House and was passed. At the time the Government took over that debt and payed US$12.5 million, to the Metropolitan Bank and various debtors that ZUPCO had.
The ZUPCO Debt Assumption Act further mandated ZUPCO as a parastatal and the Minister to improve numerous reforms in terms of how it is managed in terms of financial management and systems of operations. This is contained in the ZUPCO Debt Assumption Act which was passed by this House.
Madam Speaker, as of 10 May, 2024 media reports indicated that ZUPCO now has a debt again, which stands at US$28 million. This is at the back of its debt of UD$12.5 million being assumed by Government in 2005. I come Madam Speaker to say the system by which we are managing ZUPCO is clearly not functional. We are moving to a second ZUPCO debt assumption period. Unfortunately this time around it will not be easy for us to have these conversations around assuming the ZUPCO debt, because ZUPCO has now been included in the Mutapa Wealth Fund and there is little that the public can do with respect to entities that are part of that fund. All the same, we need now to find means of making sure that ZUPCO is viable, because despite the debt assumption of 20 years ago, the Debt Assumption Act, making recommendations on reforms that were going to prevent ZUPCO from being in debt again, ZUPCO is back in debt.
So this motion calls for financial assistance to both ZUPCO and transport operators. Madam Speaker, we have no option. We cannot subject our people completely to the private sector when it comes to the issue of public transport because people always need social safety and social security. We need to find means by which we can make ZUPCO work.
Madam Speaker, one of the ways will be through doing to ZUPCO what we did to ZBC. At some point we had one ZBC which was in charge of all radio stations, which was in charge of everything on air. One day we made a resolution that we are now going to move ZBC to be on its own as a parastatal running everything and we are creating ZBC Holdings. By creating ZBC Holdings we then managed to have Radio Zimbabwe being a standalone company with its own board, its own systems of operation. We had ZTV being a standalone company with its own systems and ways of operating and so forth and so on.
We could look at ZUPCO and try to move it this way before we consider the huge financial assistance that it needs because as it stands right now, for ZUPCO to be able to function we first need to clear the US$28 million debt that it already has. We can then start to make it function and it is not an easy thing that we can just speak about and pretend that it can be done by just pumping money and hoping that things will proceed normally.
Madam Speaker, the opportunity we have to take ZUPCO the ZBC direction is that ZUPCO is already a parastatal of the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works. It is not a parastatal of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development and we can look into other countries. We can look even into proposals that were done just before me by Hon. Tshuma. The proposal could be to say let us have ZUPCO as it exists now as a holding company and then we have Murehwa United Passenger Company that I know Hon. Zemura will be proud of. We can then have Gokwe United Passenger Company that I know Hon. Tshuma will be proud of. Then we have these companies run by local authorities, run at local level but still having the supervision and management of a ZUPCO Holdings at national level. By so doing, we will develop our own best practices here and be able to say this can work, this cannot work.
Madam Speaker, I come from Bulawayo. If you are using Masiyephambili Road, there is some place called Govheya. If you get to Govheya, you will feel that you are at a cemetery of buses. This is a fleet of ZUPCOs that we bought as a country. They came into our roads and within two or three years, all of them were parked at Govheya and they are still parked there today. They are of no use. We need to say as we think of recapitalising ZUPCO we must find other ways because the old ways we have done of saying ZUPCO is in debt, let us give them money, they buy new cars, those cars got defunct. Again, ZUPO has problems, we pump money. It has proven that it does not work and the ZUPCO Debt Assumption Act of 2005 is enough proof for this House to consider. Madam Speaker, I believe that if we do that we will be able at some point to resuscitate our public transport system.
Linked to that, Madam Speaker, is around the issue of what mode of transport do we have mainly in the country. Commuter omnibuses are part of our public transport system and I see that the motion also speaks to assistance for the private sector, but Madam Speaker, we need to ask ourselves where we are getting these commuter omnibuses from. Most of our commuter omnibuses are manufactured in Japan. Do Japanese use commuter omnibuses for their public transport system? No, they do not. They use buses be it is urban areas, small towns. Anywhere buses are the most popular means of transport and we need to be able to support the growth and development if we are to support the private sector of those who want to bring buses into our space.
Hon. Tshuma gave us an example that you can have one bus which can load half the people at Coppa Cabana at once. We can have one bus which can load a quarter of the people at Fourth Street, Simon Muzenda taxi rank at once. A bus can do the same, be it at Batanai in Gweru, Renkini in Bulawayo or Esigodini. We need to find means of supporting that buses be increased in our transport networks, be it the private or the public sector. That way even the congestion will be reduced but we cannot ban commuter omnibuses because one of the things that always jeopardises our system is operation by banning. All we need to do is to support the increase of buses in our system. If combis find means of fair and lawful competition with buses, so be it but if also they do not succeed and they decide to join the bus industry, that is okay but it will be wrong for us to continue operating by banning.
I move to the issue of the National Railways of Zimbabwe. I remember very well at the pre-budget seminar last year when Mr. Speaker besieged this House that we should give NRZ whatever amount they want so that NRZ be revived. I support that kind of idea because we need NRZ back and functional. I experienced the beauty of the railways some four years back when I had goods that were supposed to be moved from Harare to Bulawayo. A set of sofas, a bed and a wardrobe cost me USD21 on a train from Harare to Bulawayo.
Myself alone, getting into a bus travelling from Harare to Bulawayo was USD20. This shows us how railways can be useful to us and the need for us to be serious around reviving them. In order for us to revive the railways, we need to ask ourselves what happened on the railways to get where they are. Hon. Tshuma spoke to some of the issues. The growth of the haulage truck industry in our country created means by which huge loads could move into our roads fast from one destination to another. That way people began to reduce the use of the railway. When people began to reduce the use of the railway, it meant that NRZ did not have funds it could use to maintain the railway line and even maintain its fleet of trains. Eventually, we saw the collapse of the NRZ.
On the issue of roads, the roads such as Bulawayo/Victoria Falls Road cannot be fixed as long as we have not fixed NRZ. The reason being haulage trucks have taken loads that should have been on the railway and brought the load on the road. So, you might put a lot of money today and fix Bulawayo/Victoria Falls Road, but be rest assured that in two or so years, the haulage trucks will have finished that road again and you will have to go back to redo it. Fixing NRZ is also at the centre of fixing our roads because we need to reduce the load on our roads and take it to our railways.
One of the ways we can use to achieve this is to introduce what are called weigh bridges because when we teach our drivers when they go to VID to acquire their licences, the question of weight restrictions is always there, but we are not doing weight restrictions in Zimbabwe. If we are doing them, then we are not enforcing them. My proposal is that let us introduce weight restrictions enforcement in all our roads and say this is the total amount of weight.
THE HON. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. Bajila, you are left with five minutes.
HON. BAJILA: Thank you Madam Speaker. When we are introducing weight restrictions, we say this is the total weight that can be carried on any vehicle on Bulawayo/Beitbridge Road. We introduce weigh bridges at every tollgate. Whenever a vehicle has to pass through a tollgate, there must be an automatic system of weighing it and say your weight is above use on this road and therefore, you are being fined on the spot before you even cross that tollgate. The fine has to be so prohibitive and the ticket should be null and void at the next tollgate.
For example, if you are fined on the tollgate from Bulawayo to Harare Road, when you get to Gweru, you should not say I have this receipt and I paid at the Norton tollgate, so I cannot pay here. No, you have to pay at every tollgate that you pass if you are overweight. When we do so, there will be reduction in weight on our roads and when we do so, some of the weights will go to the railway. We will have hit two birds with one stone.
We also need to go further and increase the fines of overweight on strategic roads of this country such as Plumtree/Mutare, Beitbridge/Chrundu and Beitbridge/Victoria Falls. We need to increase the fines for having overweight load on these roads. That way, I believe we will resuscitate NRZ, manage the lifespan of our roads better and that way, I believe that we will be able to bring back our ZUPCO. With those words Madam Speaker, I thank you.
Financial Assistance To ZUPCO And Private Transport Operators
